Magnum Opus
by A Guy Named Goo
Summary: While receiving training following a less than stunning evaluation, Edward is sent to follow a lead involving four friends and illegal experiments conducted during the war that could be what he has been looking for.
1. Evaluation

Author's Notes: Okay, a little backstory here: I originally wrote this piece for NaNoWriMo 2005. I won, but I wasn't terribly happy with it and set it aside to clean up one day before posting it. Three and a half years later, I happen to find it while cleaning up my harddrive. And I....ignore it until my next harddrive cleaning, and finally decide to sit down, clean it up, and post it for your reading enjoyment. So yeah, it's not beta'd, since the goal was to get it off my damn harddrive. Betas are good, betas are your friends, I always get my newer stuff beta'd, I assure you. It does, however, have the benefit of having been looked over/edited by me years later, when it might as well have been a new story to me. It's still not perfect, and there are a lot of things (particularly the ending) that I'm thrilled about, but I like to think it's still readable and has some merit. And if not, well, it's not like I'm charging anyone for it, right?

Spoiler Warning: Set after episode 26, with some spoilers to later episodes and especially the movie.

Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist. Many nice people who are not me do. I own the OCs that are littered about, but this late in the game, you can have them.

**Magnum Opus**

**By A Guy Named Goo**

**Chapter 1: Evaluation**

Edward ducked underneath a shelf of ground that had just risen in the wake of a powerful blast, looking around him at the items that he had at his disposal. The closest thing was a table with many small articles scattered on it: buckets of water, various minerals, a lit bunsen burner, flasks of colored chemicals...an ideal chemistry set.

Edward dove toward the table, but another blast upset the entire thing. He looked at the chemicals, quickly trying to determine what they were, but he knew he had too little time. He clapped his hands, and put them on the table, drawing the metal together into the familiar shape of his spear. He rolled out of the way of another blast and used his spear to launch himself up into the air, leaving rubble in his wake.

"Time!" a voice shouted. Lights suddenly switched on, and Edward blinked under the sudden brightness, turning in the direction of the voice. Colonel Roy Mustang was standing behind a short stone barrier, holding his watch in one gloved hand. On one side of him was Alphonse, managing to look anxious despite his unchanging facial expression. A line of people Edward couldn't recognize were lined up behind him.

Edward dropped the spear and brushed off his duster. "What, that's it? I was just getting started!" he shouted boastfully to his audience.

Roy stepped out from around the barrier, pocketing his watch once more. "You were given twenty minutes. It's been twenty minutes." Roy kicked the spear off to the side. "Not as impressive as some of your past evaluations, Fullmetal."

Edward grimaced. "Hey, you said the goal was to survive using whatever I had to. I'm alive, I'm in one piece..." He moved his right arm, listening to make sure that this assessment was, indeed, true. Well, it sounded like everything was in working order, anyway.

Roy shrugged. "That you are. And that was the goal of the evaluation, but it's called an 'evaluation' because we evaluate your performance. As in assess your strengths and weaknesses."

"And I have weaknesses?" Edward asked. He stood up on a piece debris. "You're just being a bastard because of what happened during my last evaluation, aren't you? You're a State Alchemist. You have to have an evaluation. I want to see yours!"

Roy still had to look down at his subordinate, despite his clearly assuming his place on the debris to put them closer to the same height. "I've already had mine. The results are none of your business. But as your sponsor, the results of yours are mine. And your evaluation shows you have a significant weakness that could affect your performance on missions, which is the military's concern."

Edward continued to glare at Roy in silence for a few moments. "You're really enjoying this, aren't you?"

Roy waved a dismissive hand, turning to walk away. "I'm your sponsor. Your weaknesses reflect on me. I have a lot more to gain from you getting a perfect evaluation. But as you don't have one, let's go discuss the results elsewhere and let someone else take their test."

Edward jumped off the debris, following Roy closely as he stepped back behind the barrier. Alphonse fell into step behind him as they passed through, leaning over a little to talk to his older brother.

"Brother, did you pass?" Alphonse asked expectantly.

Edward turned to glare at Alphonse for a moment, then sighed resignedly. "I don't know. I guess. The Colonel here is taking me somewhere to discuss my 'weaknesses'."

"He can come, too, if you insist. You end up telling him everything anyway," Roy told Edward. They were walking through the halls of Eastern Headquarters now, heading in the direction of Roy's office.

Alphonse stood up straight again, waving his hands in a gesture of refusal. "Oh, no, Colonel. If you need to speak with Brother privately, I can wait." Edward knew he just wanted to be elsewhere when he had his inevitible temper trantrum directed at Roy.

Roy held open the door to his office. "Your prerogative," he said.

Edward turned to look at Alphonse. "This won't be long. Just wait outside and I'll be out in a few minutes, okay?"

"A few minutes to discuss your weaknesses? You seem pretty sure for someone who didn't think they had any until a few minutes ago, Fullmetal," Roy said with a smirk. Edward glared at him as he strode into his office, waiting for the clanking sound of Alphonse leaving before seating himself on a sofa. Roy closed the door and went to sit at his desk.

"All right, I know you're dying to tell me what my supposed weakness is, so out with it," Edward demanded. He sounded rather like he was sulking, as if the sting of being informed his alchemy technique wasn't perfect was just sinking in.

Roy sighed, thumbing through the stack of paper sitting on his desk. "It's not quite as simple as that, Fullmetal. The ones in charge of the evaluations think that it's a problem that can only be remedied by more training with another alchemist."

Edward sat up a little straighter. "After what happened the last time we studied with an alchemist that was working for the military?!" he cried out. "No damn way! I'll find my own teacher or figure out how to fix it myself!"

Roy shook his head. "You don't have a choice if you want to keep your status as a State Alchemist, Fullmetal. To be blunt, your evaluation shows that your problem lies in quick-thinking and using the tools available to you. You're getting to be a bit one-note, and that _will_ affect you if you're ever in a situation where you're limited."

"But I know how to combine things! I wouldn't be a State Alchemist if I didn't!" Edward argued, standing up now.

"I know that, and you know that, and they know that. It's not whether you can do it that's being questioned. You're right: if anyone doubted whether you could or not, you wouldn't be a State Alchemist. But you completely ignored the dozens of things you could have used to protect yourself and went right to the old standbys you've always used, when there were things you could have done that would have been much more effective. It's not that you can't do it. It's that you don't."

Edward stormed up to the desk, pointing at Roy's glove. "You're the Flame Alchemist! You're known for only having one trick that doesn't even work in the rain! How the hell can you call me 'one-note'?"

Roy rubbed the array on the back of his glove again. "I had my evaluation already. I already told you the results were none of your business, but needless to say, that problem didn't show up on it." Edward noticed that the way he was talking heavily implied that there _had_ been some problems on his evaluation. Well, at least he had a small victory.

Roy took a paper from the stack on his desk, taking a pen into his other hand. "I _can_ improvise. I don't even have my gloves when I get evaluated. As impressive as it is that you don't have to use a circle, I think that if you _had_ used one, the evaluation committee wouldn't be having this concern."

Edward snorted. "So you're saying that I'm so much of a prodigy that the committee is worried that I may not be one at all. That makes _perfect_ sense."

Roy shrugged. "I didn't make the evaluation. You know that you can do it, and I know that you can do it. But they don't, and you did nothing to show them otherwise. So now you've got conditional reinstatement, with more training being the condition. Take it or leave it."

Edward crossed his arms over his chest. "You're my sponsor! Can't you tell them that I'm fine?"

Roy shook his head. "It doesn't work that way. They all outrank me. I'm there because as your sponsor, I am responsible for making sure you meet the military's expectations of a State Alchemist." Roy leaned back in his seat, steepling his fingers, apparently considering something. "But I think they would be willing to grant a little leeway in who trains you."

Edward cocked his head to the side. "Leeway? As in let me pick who trains me?"

"Not quite," Roy corrected. "Let _me_ pick."

Edward snorted. "Because you did such a great job finding us someone to study with the last time, right?"

Roy smiled sadly. "I admit, the Shou Tucker situation was sad and entirely unforseen at the time. But the person I have in mind now is completely harmless, and probably who the military had in mind for you to train with anyway. And you'd have to go to Central, which would unfortunately keep you away from me until you are finished..."

Edward slumped his shoulders. "And I have no choice if I want to stay a State Alchemist?"

"I'm afraid not."

"All right. How soon do I have to leave?"

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The first thing Edward noticed as he stepped up to the house in Central a week later was that it smelled good. Very good, in fact. He couldn't pinpoint one specific aroma, but it combined into something distinctly homey and inviting. He sniffed the air deeply, then became aware of Alphonse looking down at him.

"What? It smells good," Edward said in his defense.

"Glad you think so. You'll be smelling it a lot around here," Roy said with a smile as he knocked on the door.

There were some banging sounds heard inside, followed by a friendly voice calling "just a minute!". Edward waited for said minute. And another. And finally, several minutes had passed.

"Colonel?" Alphonse asked, but Roy held up his finger in a silencing gesture.

The door finally came open slightly, slowly, and pale blue eyes swept over the figures appraisingly. "Oh my..." the friendly voice said. The door closed again, and the sound of a chain lock being disengaged could be heard. The door opened wide now, revealing a delicate man who couldn't have looked less imposing if he tried. He wasn't very tall, the top of his head coming about eye level to Roy, and he was rather pale, his cheeks slightly sunken and his light blue eyes sporting bags. He was wearing a pink apron over his white dress shirt, which had the sleeves rolled up, and his arms, shirt, apron, and face were smeared with flour and other stains of various colors. His hair was black and came to just past his shoulder blades, but was tied back in a loose ponytail and streaked with gray, although Edward couldn't tell if it was natural or from the flour.

"C-Colonel Mustang," the man said, stepping aside to let Roy and the pair he had with him into his home. "What I surprise. I mean, I can't say this was unexpected, because you told me you were coming, but I didn't expect it to be so soon. Is it soon? What day is it?" The man started looking around his living room for something, but apparently failed to find it (a feat, considering it consisted of only the bare essential furniture, a few assorted tables, and a telephone), as he turned his gaze back toward the trio, wiping his hands on his apron and bring it up to wipe his face as well. He only managed to smear more flour on his cheeks.

"It's been a week since I phoned you, and you've probably received some sort of official notice by now," Roy told the man patiently.

"I did?" the man asked. He looked at the pile of letters sitting on a table near the door, picking them up and rummaging through them. "Oh. It must be this. I probably should have noticed the military postmark on this..." He took a small knife out of the pocket of his black dress pants, slitting open the envelope and withdrawing the contents. "Oh my...I really should have read this sooner." He put the letter back into the envelope. "Well, no worries. You're all here now and you're safe. You're probably all hungry, too. Dinner will be ready soon. I made plenty. I always do."

The man turned, about to disappear through the door at the other end of the living room, until Roy's voice stopped him. "If you don't mind, I'd like to get introductions out of the way first."

The man paused at the door, mouth moving as if repeating what Roy had just said, brow furrowed in concentration. "Oh! Yes, of course." He turned around, smiling nervously, hand still poised to push open the door.

Roy pointed at the man. "Fullmetal, Alphonse, this is Calvinia Hart, the Building Block Alchemist."

Hart turned away from the door, bowing slightly even as he continued to wipe his hands on his apron. "I would offer you my hand, but I am afraid they are both quite messy right now so you might not appreciate the gesture," he explained. He looked up at Alphonse. "So you are Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist?"

Alphonse jumped a little, and Edward looked away from the man, right hand clenched into a fist. "Um...no, sir...Mr. Hart...I'm Alphonse. He's my older brother, Edward."

Hart mouthed what Alphonse had just said, the look of concentration appearing on his face again. Suddenly, his eyes went wide and he blushed very deeply. "Oh, I am terribly sorry, Mr. Elric! It's just...well, from the name, I assumed...I shouldn't have assumed anything at all. No disrespect intended, surely."

Edward unclenched his fist, his anger appeased by the man's sincere sense of remorse over the mistake. In fact, he was rather surprised by just how upset he seemed to be. "It's no big deal, really," he said at last, and some of the redness started to fade from Hart's cheeks.

"I should really go check on the food. Excuse me," Hart said with a nod. He pushed open the door, and the heavenly smells intensified as it swung on its hinge for a few moments before settling closed once again.

"I told you he was harmless," Roy said proudly.

Edward pointed at the door with his thumb. "_He's_ a State Alchemist?"

Roy nodded, removing his coat and hanging it on the coat rack next to the front door. "And a brilliant one. He's settled into a civilian role now, just keeping his services on retainer, but he's an Ishbal war veteran."

Alphonse was still eyeing the door to what had to have been the kitchen. "He doesn't seem like the soldier type..."

Roy shrugged, sitting on the sofa. "He isn't. Not really. That's why he's working in a civilian capacity now. I didn't serve with his unit in the war, so I'm not sure what he was like back then or how he got through it. Settle down, Fullmetal, and put down your suitcase. You're in for a treat."

Edward put his suitcase down where he ws standing, also removing his duster and hanging it on the coat rack next to Roy's. "How is he supposed to train us to use alchemy better? He hardly remembers who we are, and we just introduced ourselves."

Roy was smirking when Edward walked over to a chair that looked very soft, thowing himself into it. He was surprised to find himself sinking quite deep, and then he realized why: the bottom of the chair had broken. He pulled himself up and clapped his hands, bringing them to the bottom of the chair and focusing on reassembling the wood. He then sat down on it, content that it would at least hold his weight.

"I've been meaning to fix that chair. Thank you for doing it for me," came Hart's voice. Edward had apparently been so busy with fixing the chair, he hadn't noticed the man come out of the kitchen. He was holding a mixing bowl to his chest, a smear of what seemed to be chocolate next to his nose as he continued to stir the contents with a wooden spoon.

Edward bounced up and down in it a little to prove its sturdiness. "It's fine now."

Hart smiled gently. "So it is. Could you boys give me a hand in the kitchen? I just need to put the finishing touches on dessert and then I can serve dinner."

"Of course, Mr. Hart," Alphonse said obediently, following Hart into the kitchen, his wide frame just barely managing to fit through the doorway. Edward, however, was not inclined to move.

"Go help him, Fullmetal," Roy ordered.

"Why? I fixed his chair, and he can't need more than one extra set of hands," Edward pointed out.

"You're here because he's training you, not Alphonse. Now go help," Roy repeated.

Edward sighed and got up, muttering about what helping him with his cooking had to do with his training. The second he stepped into the kitchen, he was pelted in the face with a pink apron similar to Hart's.

"It's about time you got in here," Hart said, sounding a little impatient. He pointed at the table, where two green aprons were spread out. "Make your brother an apron. He won't remove the armor and I can't allow him to work in the kitchen without it. And put on a hairnet."

Edward was amazed. This was the shy man who had gotten flustered over a case of mistaken identity only moments before? Hart busied himself over the stove, stirring things and opening one of the three ovens he had in the kitchen.

"I see you standing over there, but I don't see any aprons yet," Hart said, his voice full of warning.

Edward put down the pink apron and clapped his hands again, pressing them into the two green aprons and focusing on the general shape of aprons. He then produced an apron that was the perfect size for Alphonse, who took it and put it on gratefully.

"Great. One of you is ready. Now you," Hart demanded, pointing at Edward. "It's not hard. Put on the apron and the hairnet and get over here. I need you to help me now."

Edward finally found his voice again. "Why do I have to wear a hairnet? You're not!"

"I'm used to working in a kitchen, and blonde hairs are harder to spot than black. The more you talk, the more the food suffers, and I won't have you wasting food as long as you are in _my_ kitchen," Hart explained. He strode over to Edward, picking up the apron and putting it over his head. Edward quickly tied it on, then picked up the hairnet that was now dangling between Hart's fingers, muttering unpleasant things as he put it on.

"Alphonse, go to oven one and use the thermometer to check the temperature of the roast. You, the small one. Stay close to me. You're going to be my sous-chef."

"Small one?!" Edward growled. "Who are you calling so small you couldn't tell the difference between him and a grain of rice?!"

Hart pointed at Edward with a wooden spoon. "_You_. And I will continue to do so until you give me a reason not to. I have a few simple rules: you make everything you're going to eat and you don't waste food or you'll regret it. Tonight you can eat dinner with the Colonel, but that's because I am already mostly finished and it's too late to start something new. Now take this spoon and stir the pot on burner one."

Edward took the spoon roughly from Hart, glaring at him as he went to put the spoon in one of the many pots simmering on the eight burners.

"What are you doing?!" Hart shrieked, taking the spoon from him. Edward thought he was going to hit him for a moment, but instead he thrust the spoon into a pot. "_This_ is burner one. See? They go one, two, three...all the way until eight. You're a smart boy. I assume you know how to count."

A few minutes later, Edward and Alphonse were both balancing trays, platters, and bowls of exquisite smelling food into a dining room, where four places were already set at the table. Roy was sitting at the head of the table, smirk still in place.

"I'm going to make sure you hurt for this, Mustang," Edward swore through clenched teeth.

"I hear talking when there's still food to be served!" Hart's voice called from inside the kitchen. Edward jumped and dove into the kitchen.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

At the dinner table, Hart's evil split personality seemed to be at bay once more as he nervously ate, glancing around at the others between each bite. Edward was stabbing his food with ferocity, thinking it would serve the crazy man right if he refused to touch any of it, but finding himself unable to resist: it smelled delicious, and tasted even better than it smelled.

Hart looked over at Alphonse, who was poking at his food without eating any. "Is something the matter, Alphonse? Do you not like it? I can make something else if-"

"He's fine," Edward interrupted. Both Roy and Hart turned to face him. Edward sighed, taking another bite and chewing it thoughtfully as he contemplated his options for explaining why Alphonse didn't need to eat. He put down his fork as something occurred to him. "He's on a really strict diet. He can only eat certain foods. At certain times. And he wears the armor because his body is _really_ delicate."

Hart looked over at Alphonse, apparently buying the lie because he suddenly looked very sad. "I am so sorry to hear that, Alphonse. I hope I will be able to make you something that you can eat someday..."

Alphonse nodded, pushing his plate away. "I hope so, too, Mr. Hart. This all looks very good."

"It's very good, indeed. My compliments to the chef," Roy said, wiping his mouth with his napkin. "But then, no one expects anything less of you, Hart."

Hart blushed again and took another bite. "It was really nothing. I was already cooking all day, and it's always nice to have someone around to enjoy it."

Edward looked around the table. There was so much food that even with his appetite, there would still be quite a bit of leftovers. "So you just spend all day cooking for no one?"

Hart shook his head. "Not no one. The military knows I cook, and usually there are more officers visiting for dinner than this. I am very popular for a free home-cooked meal, although I can only allow so many people in to eat, obviously. I guess word of the Colonel arriving with you two got around and it was assumed that I would want this to be a private dinner."

Edward pulled Alphonse's discarded plate over toward him. "How are you going to have time to teach us alchemy if you're cooking for the military all day every day?"

Hart put down his fork, looking up at the ceiling and mouthing what Edward had just said, the look of concentration returning to his face. A look of realization crossed his face, and he glanced over at Roy. "Colonel Mustang, you told me that they were coming to me for cooking lessons."

Edward started to choke on his food.

"Brother!" Alphonse cried, and he hit Edward's back exceptionally hard, causing the food to fly out of his windpipe. Edward slumped forward a little, taking deep breaths, and fumbled for the nearest thing to drink...which turned out to be milk. He spit that out all over his food.

"Cooking?!" he cried out, still grasping his throat, glaring daggers at Roy. "You said we were coming here to learn about alchemy!"

Roy took another bite of his food. "I said you were coming here to fix the flaw in your alchemy technique. I never said you were going to learn alchemy."


	2. Lessons

**Chapter 2: Lessons**

Edward threw himself back onto the bed, groaning a little and holding his left hand up to examine in the sparse light coming from the moon out the window. "After washing all of those dishes, I don't think my hand's ever going to stop being pruny..."

Alphonse sat down on the roll-away bed that Hart had dragged into the spare bedroom (after making a great show of trying to remember where he kept the extra bed), glancing over at Edward once he had settled himself down. "I don't think it was that bad. It was kind of fun. Like when Mom used to let us help her in the kitchen."

Edward snorted and turned onto his side, reaching to undo his braid. He realized he was still wearing his hairnet, and yanked it off, then groped for his hair tie. "That was totally different. This guy is nuts. He acts like he couldn't hurt a flea, but the second he gets into the kitchen he's like some sort of...I don't know. Dictator or something."

Alphonse watched his brother snuggle under the covers, apparently still considering what had happened that day. "Maybe he's just more comfortable in the kitchen. You said his cooking was very good."

Edward rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. "What the hell is the Colonel thinking, anyway? I need to get someone to say that I don't have a problem with my alchemy so that evaluation committee will let me off conditional reinstatement. What does cooking have to do with that? That bastard probably just wants someone in East City who can cook for him like Hart does."

"Sensei used to say cooking was like alchemy all the time," Alphonse pointed out. "And she was a very good cook. And she cooked all the time. She taught us a few things while she was training us, if you remember."

Edward nodded. "Yeah. And I got that they were alike in some ways, but they're completely different things. Why am I wasting my time learning to cook when I am supposed to be out trying to find the Stone? The only reason I'm here at all is because I need to get fully reinstated so we can keep looking!"

Alphonse sighed (as much as he could manage to, anyway). "I'm sure this will be worth it in the end, Brother."

Edward hit his pillow a little to fluff it, then put his head on it again. "I hope so, or I'm going to bake the Colonel a poisoned cake when I'm done here."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The sun had just barely started to rise when the door opened a tiny bit. "Edward? Alphonse?" a timid voice asked. Alphonse, who had spent the previous night reading, looked up at the source of the voice. Hart was standing in the hallway, just barely peeking in, as if he were afraid of intruding.

"Do you need anything, Mr. Hart?" Alphonse asked, setting down the book and reaching over to push the door open a bit more. Hart stepped back away from the door as it came open, then slowly crept inside the room, acting for all the world like this wasn't his home and the Elrics weren't the guests.

Hart looked over the at bed where Edward was still sleeping, rubbing the back of his head nervously. As he was currently clean and wearing fresh clothes, Alphonse was left to conclude that some of the gray in his hair was, indeed, natural. Hart suddenly turned to look at Alphonse, blushing a little. "I'm sorry, I know it's early, but...it's almost time for breakfast. Could you please wake up your brother and come down to the kitchen?"

Alphonse couldn't blame Hart for not wanting to wake up Edward, although Hart had no way of knowing that the young alchemist was irritible if his sleep were disturbed. He nodded once. "Of course. We'll be downstairs in a little bit."

Hart smiled. "Good. The bathroom is downstairs if you need to use it or shower," he said brightly. With that, he disappeared out of the bedroom.

Alphonse got up and crept over to Edward's bed. "Brother?"

"Nnnn...not now," Edward muttered in response.

Alphonse put a hand on Edward's bare left shoulder, causing his older brother's eyes to fly open. He sat up, looking at Alphonse irritably. "What gives? The sun's hardly up..."

Alphonse gestured toward the open door of their bedroom. "Mr. Hart wants us downstairs for breakfast. He said you can take a shower and go to the bathroom first."

Edward threw off the blanket, muttering unpleasant things as he made his way over to his suitcase and began to pull out fresh clothes. "When does that guy sleep? It feels like we all just went to bed..."

Alphonse was hovering over Edward. "We shouldn't keep him waiting, Brother. We don't want to upset him."

Edward glared at Alphonse as he stepped past him, out of the bedroom and toward the bathroom so that he could shower.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The second Edward stepped into the kitchen, he was pelted in the face with a familiar pink apron. "Hey, I thought I was supposed to come down for breakfast!" he snapped, putting on the apron without being prompted.

"Right. It's time to make breakfast. You cook everything you eat in this house, remember?" Hart explained, holding his wooden spoon again and looking impatient. "And where's your hairnet?"

Edward pointed at his hair. "I have a braid! Isn't that enough? Besides, my hairnet's upstairs..."

"No, a braid is not enough, and there's no time to go back and get it," Hart answered, sighing and tapping his spoon against his hand for a few moments. He opened another drawer that was full of aprons and hairnets, pulling one out and handing it to Edward. "Don't forget it again. Now, hurry and put it on. We're late."

Edward put on the hairnet as Hart scrambled over to one of the ice boxes, pulling out eggs, milk, butter, and a host of other things that Edward couldn't immediately recognize. "Alphonse, come bring this over to the counter for me. Small one, you start preparing the pans on burners six and eight. I showed you how to do that yesterday, so you should remember."

"Why do you keep calling me 'small one'?!" Edward shouted. He pointed at Alphonse. "You always remember his name!"

Hart stepped up to Edward, smacking the back of his hand with the spoon. Fortunately for Edward, it had been his right hand. "Don't point in here! There's not enough room as it is. You'll knock something over. And I already told you yesterday: you treat me with respect, I'll do the same. Now prepare those pans."

Edward picked up the butter from pile of ingredients that Alphonse had laid out on the counter, glaring at Hart as he began to coat the pans.

"Mr. Hart?" Alphonse asked.

Hart turned to look at him, no longer weilding his spoon threateningly, some of the gentle soul he was outside of the kitchen breaking through the sharp persona he had suddenly adopted. "Yes, Alphonse?"

Alphonse stepped out of the way as Hart began to reach for some eggs. "You're a State Alchemist, right?"

"That's correct," Hart confirmed. He handed two of the eggs to Edward. "Break these one handed. Don't break the yolks. Making a fried egg is as basic as you can get. Please don't make me have to start from the very beginning with you."

Edward gave Hart a nasty glare, but Alphonse didn't give him an opportunity to say anything to him. "If you're still a State Alchemist, that means you're doing research for the military, right?"

Hart nodded, taking some bowls out of a cupboard. "That's correct. Could you fetch me that bag of flour over there?"

Alphonse went over to get the large bag of flour, spilling a little into his armor as he lifted it. He brought it over to Hart, who motioned to a place next to him on the counter. "Mr. Hart, if you don't mind my asking, what are you researching?"

Hart paused in measuring out flour, his face taking on the same nervous look it usually had outside of the kitchen. He mouthed the words that Alphonse had just spoken, then began to measure out the flour again. "Nothing personally. I do get assigned to research and build things for the military, but at the moment, teaching your brother is my only assignment."

Edward flipped the eggs with a spatula. "You have to have some sort of speciality. You're called....what are you called again?"

"The Building Block Alchemist. Less talking, more cooking," Hart snapped. He finished measuring out the flour and dumped it into a bowl. "It's a pretty interesting trick that lead to me getting that name. Maybe I'll show you someday, if you follow your training to the letter."

There was little talk after that as the brothers continued to follow Hart's orders, making generous portions of food. Hart had just sent Edward and Alphonse to take it all into the dining room when someone knocked on the door.

Edward looked up at the group of officers that had just come in, relieved to see that the Colonel was no where in the group. In fact, he didn't recognize any of the men who had come in at all, although Hart was nodding and greeting them by name as they filed in. Edward watched them from his place at the kitchen door that overlooked the living room, noticing a significant exchange of glances between Hart and a tall, broad, severe looking man with a shaved head who, from the look of the bars on his uniform, was a Brigidier General. Although Hart was always nervous, he looked downright terrified as he quickly greeted and saluted the man.

After everyone was greeted, Hart turned and went back into the kitchen. "You boys can have a seat and eat when the officers have taken their places." Edward looked over at Hart, opening his mouth to say something, but changed his mind. Hart was currently leaning over the sink, looking almost like he was going to be ill.

"Mr. Hart, are you coming out to eat with us?" Alphonse asked, clearly sounding worried about the sudden change in the man's mood.

Hart looked over his shoulder for a moment, mouthing part of what Alphonse said. Then he smiled and shook his head, taking off his apron and throwing it into the hamper in the corner. "I don't eat breakfast. I'll be out shortly. You go and eat your fill."

Edward eagerly pulled off his apron and hairnet and went out to take his seat with the other officers, but Alphonse stayed behind in the kitchen.

"Do you need anything, Mr. Hart?" Alphonse asked again, obviously not inclined to leave the delicate man alone in the kitchen. "I don't eat breakfast, either."

Hart picked up a rag on the counter and used it to wipe his face. "I'll be fine, Alphonse. Really. You're the only person who can make sure your brother behaves, so you should probably go out there, anyway."

"If you're sure..." Alphonse said hesitantly. Hart nodded, and he had no choice but to go out into the dining room, just in time to hear Edward shout at many laughing officers about a comment made regarding his diminutive stature.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

After breakfast, the large man stayed after all of the officers had gone. Hart had made his appearance and was watching him nervously as he gathered up his dishes, blushing and shaking slightly under the man's hard, dark eyes.

"Aren't you going to formally introduce me to your guests?" the man asked. It sounded like an order, and Hart jumped upon hearing it.

"O-of course," Hart said with a nod. He cleared his throat and indicated to the man. "Edward, Alphonse, this is Brigidier General Cromwell, my commanding officer and sponsor. Brigidier General, sir, I believe you know the Elric brothers..."

"By reputation only," Cromwell said, standing and offering his hand to Alphonse.

Alphonse shook his hand hesitantly. "Um...sir...you _do_ know that I'm Alphonse, right?"

Cromwell scoffed. "Of course. I said I knew you by reputation. And the Fullmetal Alchemist has a reputation for being very small."

Edward opened his mouth to say something, but seeing all the color draining from Hart's face made him change his mind. He was definitely afraid of this man and what he could do. Suddenly, a large hand was thrust in front of him, which Edward shook automatically.

"So if you're Mr. Hart's sponsor, that means you're a State Alchemist, too, right?" Alphonse asked. Hart winced and stepped forward, apparently reaching for Alphonse, but suddenly busying himself with straightening out the fresh tablecloth he had just laid out after breakfast.

Cromwell released Edward's hand and turned to Alphonse, suddenly smiling broadly. His face was not one that was capable of radiating warmth, however, and made him seem predatory rather than friendly. "Smart boy. That's right: I'm a State Alchemist. I usually don't come to Lieutenant Colonel Hart's home for a meal, but I had business to attend to anyway and I figured I might as well help myself to some of the cooking he is so famous for."

Hart saluted as Cromwell turned to face him. "I hope it was satisfactory, sir."

"Quite. I may have to come for your famous meals more often," Cromwell assured him. "But as I said, I'm here for business. So if we could please speak in private?"

Hart nodded, lowering his hand and stepping away from the table. "Of course. We can...talk in my laboratory."

Edward jumped, then spun around to face Hart. "Wait, you have a laboratory? Can I see it?"

Cromwell laughed, patting the top of Edward's head vigorously and nearly sending the boy to his knees. "Enthusiastic, I see. Well, I shouldn't expect anything less from the youngest State Alchemist."

Hart bit his lip and rubbed his upper arms nervously. "M-Maybe later, Edward. This way, sir?" Hart headed toward the hall, Cromwell following close behind.

Edward followed as well, hoping to get a glimpse into this supposed laboratory, but when Hart drew a key out of his pocket and used it to open the door next to the bathroom, he couldn't see anything but a dark flight of stairs leading down to what he assumed was the basement. He motioned Cromwell in, then gave Edward an apologetic look as he closed the door behind him, a resounding click signalling that he'd locked it behind him.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Edward was still sitting in the dining room when the door to the laboratory finally opened. He got up and went to look at the hallway, as if he expected to be invited inside now. Cromwell came out on his own, shutting the door behind him, with no sign that Hart was following him.

Cromwell glared down at Edward, making no attempt at pretending to be friendly. "My, you're an...inquisitive one," he muttered. Edward knew he wanted to say "nosy", but probably didn't out of regard for the fact that he was a State Alchemist as well, teenager or not.

"What's he doing down there?" Edward asked, ignoring the comment.

"That's really none of your business, young man. He is doing his job. That is all you need to know," Cromwell responded coolly.

Edward looked at the door again. "So you gave him an assignment?"

"If you're worried about whether I hurt him or not, don't," Cromwell snapped, losing what little patience he had. "He's been a nervous wreck since he came home from the war. I guess having your wife and child killed will do that to a man. But I think you can agree that hurting him would benefit no one in this case, especially since he doesn't have a history of non-compliance."

Edward didn't look convinced. "Then why hasn't he come up yet?"

The door opened, and Hart appeared, wiping his face with a handkerchief. "I'm all right, Edward. Really. I was just getting started on my work." He closed the door behind him and locked it. "I only came up because I have to get started on lunch. And to show the Brigidier General out, of course."

Cromwell turned his gaze over to Hart. "Remember: the military pays you to do alchemy, Lieutenant Colonel, not to cook."

Hart nodded, following the Brigidier General back out into the living room. "Of course, sir," he said quickly. Edward turned to face Alphonse, who had appeared behind him in the hallway during the conversation, giving him a worried look.

"Mr. Hart had a family?" was all Alphonse said in response to what had just taken place.


	3. Laboratory

**Chapter 3: Laboratory**

The next couple of weeks went by in a flurry of cooking lessons masked by barked orders and meals with a myriad of military officers, more than Edward even knew occupied Central currently. It seemed like every day at every meal there was a new mix, and Hart knew them all by name and thanked them for taking advantage of his hospitality.

But two things did not happen during those couple of weeks: Brigidier General Cromwell did not make a reappearence, and Hart never invited Edward into his laboratory. Edward had tried asking during every conceivable free moment, but when he asked in the kitchen he would be answered with by a wooden spoon across the back of his knuckles and an order to concentrate, and outside of the kitchen he would receive some nervous stammering and a hasty promise to let him see it "later".

"He's working very hard, Brother," Alphonse pointed out after Edward had complained to him about this fact yet again. "When he's not so busy, I'm sure he'll show you..."

Edward was currently sitting at the desk in their room, looking through the cookbook and recipe cards that Hart had told him to memorize in preparation for dinner the next evening.

Edward tapped the cards on the book impatiently, brow furrowed in concentration. "We don't even know what kind of alchemist he _is_. He won't tell us what the hell 'Building Block' means, he won't let us see his lab, his wife and kid are dead...this is all sounding very familiar to me. If he's up to something, I'd like to be able to stop it this time."

There was a timid knock on the door, and once again Alphonse was the one who opened the door for Hart. Edward looked up from his studying, unable to keep himself from glaring at the man. Hart looked quite upset and hurt in return.

"I...just came to tell you good night," Hart said softly, worrying the cuff of his stained shirt. "I didn't know you had so many questions. I...I guess it's my fault, really. I haven't been very...accessible these days."

"It's all right, Mr. Hart," Alphonse said quickly. "Brother just has some trouble trusting people..."

Hart held up his hand in a silencing gesture and shook his head. "I understand. Really. Edward, Alphonse, I...I guess I can show you my laboratory now."

Edward dropped the cards and leapt to his feet, running toward the door, but Alphonse snagged the back of his tank top before he could make it out all the way. "It's all right, Mr. Hart. If you're tired or busy, it can wait until some other time..."

Edward shrugged out of Alphonse's grasp. "Like hell it can!" he snapped at his brother.

Hart just shook his head some more. "No, you've been in my home for quite a while now. I do owe you some explanations. Come with me." He turned and began to head down the hall and back down the stairs. Edward glared at Alphonse one more time, then began to follow him out. Alphonse hesitated, then followed them both.

Hart was still speaking as he lead them down the stairs and down the hall, to the locked door of his laboratory. "I learned alchemy and cooking simultaneously. This is probably why I understand how the two are connected so much better than you do yet, Edward. I would explain it to you, but if you realize it on your own it will mean more to you. But because of how I was taught, my speciality tended to lean less toward the quick-thinking, blink-of-an-eye techniques usually used in combat alchemy and more towards the practical applications of it, namely using alchemy to combine things."

Hart opened the door to the laboratory, gesturing for the boys to make their way down the dark staircase. Once they had begun to descend the stairs, he closed and locked the door behind him. "I know that there are many things that could mean, ranging from cooking to chimera. But I earned a reputation for my talent with improvisation. I could be given a few objects or materials, and from them very quickly manage to make something helpful in the given situation. That is why I am called the Building Block Alchemist."

Once they were downstairs, Hart began to walk around the room, switching on many lamps on several tables. There were arrays drawn all over the floor, walls, and tables of the damp, stone room. Some of them were chalk and had been wiped away, some showing signs of having had this done many times. There were many chalkboards covered with formulas and arrays scattered around the room. But more noticably, there was what appeared to be junk everywhere. Scraps of metal even Winry wouldn't have felt worth salvaging were thrown in piles on the tables and on the floor. There were also many bags of powder and bottles of fluids on the tables, and many complicated looking devices.

"On the whole, my research is innocuous," Hart assured them. "I am really nothing more than a glorified inventor these days. But the military still relies on my abilities to develop things like weapons and other equipment. I have been working very hard down here on such a request. During the war my skills were used for things like fixing and building weapons and using what little equipment we had left to work to our advantage. It feels better to not be under so much pressure."

Edward was walking around the laboratory, scanning the devices, arrays, and equipment. He paused in front of one of the chalkboards, looking at the notes that were scribbled on it in a barely legible script. Most of the words were spelled wrong or written out of order. "'Innocuous'? The stuff you have here is for explosives," Edward said accusingly.

Hart stepped up to the chalkboard, picking up a piece of chalk and erasing part of the array he had drawn, correcting the error he had found. "Yes, it is. As I said, I am working on weapons. Not the most pleasant of jobs, but it's what I'm paid for. They provide me the money and equipment, and I provide them what they want me to make. Equivalent exchange, after all. Like I feed the officers in return for the military giving me food to work with."

Alphonse was looking at another chalkboard behind them. "Mr. Hart, who are the people in these pictures?" he asked, pointing at the two pictures taped to it.

Hart looked over at Alphonse, mouthing what he had just asked. Then he jumped a little and darted over to the board, examining the pictures himself. Edward came up behind them, pushing Alphonse away so that he could get a look himself: in the first one was a very pretty blonde woman. Her long hair was braided, and the braid was draped over her shoulder. Her eyes were gray, and she was wearing a pair of small glasses balanced on the end of her nose. She was holding a very small girl with shoulder-length black hair and wide light blue eyes. Both of them were smiling happily.

In the second picture were four people clearly standing out in a desert, a beige tent behind them. Sitting on a crate was a very young looking man, his black hair just barely touching his shoulders, with friendly looking light blue eyes, his military uniform in perfect order. To his right, a woman had her leg up on the crate next to him, the coat of her uniform tied around her waist and leaving her wearing a black tank top. Her copper red hair was also obviously braided, although from the picture Edward couldn't tell how long it was. Her eyes were piercing green, and underneath her right eye was a very large piece of gauze taped over her cheek. Dangling from her right ear was a silver earring with an object of some kind dangling from a bit of chain, although in the picture it was impossible to tell what it was, and her left only had a simple silver stud in it. A young man was leaning against her shoulder, also with copper red hair, although his was short and messy. His face looked very much like the woman's, and his eyes were deep amber. He also had an earring in his right ear, but none in his left, and his coat was open slightly to reveal the black shirt underneath, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. The last person in the picture was standing directly behind the dark-haired man: he was very tall, with a long, handsome face. His white-blonde hair was very long and hung loose, most impractical given where they seemed to be. But the most unnerving part of him were his eyes: although they were both very dark, the left one seemed to be noticably larger than the right. His uniform jacket was also open, but he was wearing a dress shirt underneath, the first few buttons undone. All four people were smiling: the dark-haired man shyly, the woman looking as if she were forcing it for the picture, the red-haired man smiling broadly as if he were having the time of his life, and the man with the frightening eyes had a sideways grin, mostly showing on his right side.

Hart reached up and took the first picture, the one of the woman and the little girl. "This is my wife, Eleanora, and my daughter, Keyes," he said with a fond smile. "They both passed away while I was away at war."

"What happened to them?" Alphonse asked, his voice sounding sad and sympathetic.

Hart's smile faltered a bit, and he put the picture back up on the chalkboard. "Eleanora was a wonderful woman. She was very strong and smart, but she got involved in a lot of things that she really shouldn't have. Usually I was around to keep her out of very serious trouble, but apparently while I was away she got involved in something that I couldn't keep her from, and as a result both she and Keyes were killed. I didn't find out until after I came home from the war." He sighed and looked at the picture. "Keyes was only three years old when I got sent away, when this picture was taken. Eleanora never did send me any more pictures of her while I was away."

Edward snorted, thinking rather unpleasant things about the man's wife that he didn't dare voice. It was obvious that he still thought the best of his wife, even when it was apparent that she had probably not been a good person. He pointed at the other picture. "And that one? I take it that's you in the picture..."

Hart nodded. "That it is. That was taken on the frontlines of the war. One of the soldiers had been sent a camera by his girlfriend so he could send pictures of himself back to her and she'd know he was still alive, but when things weren't so hectic he turned the camera on us. We got copies of the pictures, eventually." He pointed at the dark haired young man in the picture. "Obviously that is me. I looked much younger than I actually was, unfortunately for me. Behind me is Ferris Keyes, my best friend, who was responsible for me getting involved in the military to begin with. The woman next to me is Renea Walker, and the man leaning against her is her brother, Cyrus Walker. As far as I know, they are all still quite alive, although quite scattered these days. Renea and Cyrus aren't even in the military anymore, and I don't know about Ferris."

Alphonse backed away from the chalkboard. "So you don't talk to any of them anymore? Not even your best friend?"

Hart shook his head. "No. Things happened to drive us apart. It happens. Ferris and I never see each other any more, despite having the same sponsor. He was the one who convinced Brigidier General Cromwell to sponsor me during the war, so I owe him quite a bit."

Hart suddenly stepped away from the chalkboard as well. "If that answers all of your questions, then we should be getting to bed. We have a very large meal to prepare tomorrow, after all."

But that wasn't all of the questions that Edward had. He wanted to know more about exactly how Hart's wife and daughter had died. He wanted to know about the people who had appeared in the picture with him, especially the man with the unnerving eyes who had apparently been responsible for getting the nervous man involved in the military in the first place, and who his daughter seemed to have been named after. Most of all, he wanted to know what project Hart was working on that involved explosions.

However, Hart was already turning off the lamps, and Edward knew that these questions would have to wait for some other time to be answered.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"That must be such a sad way to live," Alphonse said as Edward was settling himself into bed, ignoring the cookbook and recipe cards sitting on the desk. "Losing your whole family and all of your friends..."

Edward laid down on his side, pulling up the covers. "I still think the whole thing with his wife and daughter is weird. He just came back from the war and found out they were dead? Wouldn't something have tipped him off while he was over in Ishbal?"

"He said his wife didn't send him letters," Alphonse pointed out. "I'll agree that she doesn't sound like she was a very nice woman, but I really don't think Mr. Hart had anything to do with her dying. Or his daughter."

Edward snorted. "He's building a bomb down there, you know. I could hardly read his notes, but his arrays and the stuff he has are all for explosives. Really big explosives. Big enough to level entire countries. Why would the military need a bomb that powerful?"

Alphonse was quiet, apparently seriously considering this question. "For really big conflicts, I suppose," he said at last.

"The military doesn't do things 'just in case'," Edward pointed out. When he received no response from Alphonse, he gave up the topic and went to sleep.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Brigidier General Cromwell came to dinner the next night. Edward had a feeling that this would be the case, given the elaborate feast they had spent the whole day preparing on top of breakfast and lunch. Hart was confident about very few things, but his culinary abilities was one of those things, and Edward had long since learned the more effort he put into a meal, the more he was trying to make up for something else.

Like the last time he had visited, he waited until the other officers were long gone before he spoke to Hart. "Terrific meal once again, Lieutenant Colonel Hart," he commended, striding up to the man and clapping a hand on his shoulder, nearly sending him to the floor. "Of course, I hope this meal wasn't an attempt to distract me from other things, such as your apparent lack of progress in your current assignment?"

"N-No. Of course it wasn't, Sir," Hart assured him, worrying one of the napkins between his hands. Edward was taking just a bit too long in getting the dishes in his hands back to the kitchen, watching to see what the large man planned to do with his cooking instructor.

Cromwell took his hand off of him. "That's good. I'd hate to have to discipline you, after all, what with your work being a reflection on me. So would you be willing to show me what you've gotten done so far?"

Hart nodded. "O-of course. Just follow me to the laboratory..."

Cromwell glared at Edward as he followed Hart out into the hallway and to the laboratory. Edward glared back, then picked up a few more dishes and brought them into the kitchen, dropping them into the sink where Alphonse was already busy washing dishes.

"Hart just took that Cromwell guy down to his lab," Edward reported, picking up a sponge and helping Alphonse in his scrubbing.

Alphonse didn't seem alarmed by this in the slightest. "He's his sponsor. It's his job to check up on his progress."

Edward moved over to the other sink and began to rinse off the pile of dishes that had been stacked there. "But Hart's afraid of something. That's why he made such a big, fancy dinner. He's more afraid than he usually is, I mean. I think something's wrong."

Alphonse paused in scrubbing the dishes. He rarely dismissed his brother's hunches outright. Not when they proved right so often. "Like what?" he asked at last.

Edward shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe Hart couldn't do what was asked of him. Maybe he needs more materials or money. Or maybe he just needs more time. Whatever it is, it's something that Cromwell won't be happy about.'

On cue, there was a loud bang heard from the basement. Edward dropped the plate in his hand, which miraculously didn't break as it clattered into the sink with the others, and ran toward the door of the laboratory, Alphonse close behind (although he couldn't say the plate he had dropped had faired as well as Edward's).

The door to the laboratory opened, and smoked billowed out, followed by a very singed looking Cromwell, coughing hard and nearly knocking over Alphonse as he ran back in the direction of the living room. He was followed shortly by a gasping, equally singed looking Hart, who was grasping two slightly charred photographs in his hand.

"Explosives are not that hard to make, Lieutenant Colonel Hart!" Cromwell fumed. "Now do that, but do it on the scale that we asked, or we're letting you go and I'll make sure you're courtmartialed!" With that, Cromwell left, slamming the door on his way out.

Hart was still coughing, his face black from soot from the explosion. Edward could only imagine what sort of state his laboratory must be in right now. Alphonse stepped up to the miserable looking alchemist, who was staring at the door with watery blue eyes, still clutching his pictures.

"Are you all right, Mr. Hart?" he asked softly, reaching out to touch him, but not quite daring to.

Hart managed a hint of his usual gentle smile. "I....thanks for your concern, Alphonse," he said, not really answering the question. He headed in the direction of the hallway, stepping past his open laboratory door and to the bathroom. "I just need to clean up a little. Please, finish cleaning the dinner dishes." He then disappeared into the bathroom.

Edward stepped up to the open door of the laboratory, looking down the dark stairs, shaking with rage. "That bastard blew up his lab..."

"Who? Cromwell?" Alphonse asked.

Edward nodded. "He blew up his lab and all of his work. I just wish I could..." He clenched his fists, then unclenched them, sighing. "Come on. Let's go finish the dishes."


	4. Last Words

**Chapter Four: Last Words**

Edward didn't see Hart again for the rest of the night, which was odd. After dinner, Hart usually had him in the kitchen to refresh him on various cooking equipment and its uses, or was giving him stacks of recipes to memorize for the next day, all the while steadfastly refusing to tell Edward what cooking had to do with alchemy. Even if Hart found himself busy in the evenings, he usually at least made one last timid appearance in the brothers' room to wish them good night.

Edward put down the cookbook he was reading (having nothing else better to do) and checked the time on his watch, surprised by how late it was. Hart tended to go to bed early, and encouraged the boys to do the same, as they got up early to cook breakfast. "Hart hasn't come up to see us at all," Edward noted, holding up his watch to show Alphonse the time, his hand covering the inscription he had carved into the other side.

Alphonse leaned forward a little to see the time, then shrugged, the sound of the metal plates scraping together as he did so making Edward flinch a little. "His laboratory got destroyed. He's probably very busy cleaning it up."

Edward closed his watch and pocketed it again, standing up and pulling his boots back on. "I'm going to go down and see what's going on. Maybe I can help." Alphonse didn't protest, instead following Edward downstairs and toward the door that lead down to the laboratory. It was closed again, although the wall, floor, and ceiling around it were darkened by the smoke damage. Edward tried the door, surprised to find it unlocked.

"Stay up here," he ordered Alphonse, who didn't question this. Edward closed the door behind him before he started to climb down the stairs. He was very glad that he had decided to put his boots back on, because after stepping off the stairs it seemed like he couldn't take a single step without the crunch of broken glass or grind of metal being crushed punctuating it.

There were a few scattered candles, casting the room in shadows and letting Edward see the silhouettes of broken chalkboards and jagged pieces of metal on the floor. It was really a miracle that no one had gotten hurt in the explosion, although it confirmed Edward's belief that it had been controlled.

"Hart?" Edward asked softly, looking around in the mess for the man himself. He reached down and picked up a few of the scraps of metal, positioning them around one of the candles and clapping his hands. He put his hands to either side of the pile of metal and concentrated, and with a bright flash of light they formed a lantern around the candle, which he picked up.

"That's impressive," a voice said from behind Edward. He swung around with the lantern, and lit up the shadowy figure of Hart, standing on the other side of the room and leaning against a table. He was holding something in his hand, but Edward couldn't see what it was in this light or from that distance. "If you'd just done something like that during your evaluation, you wouldn't be here at all."

Edward shrugged. "I do things like this all the time. Those evaluation guys probably just didn't like me." He stepped up to Hart, noticing that in the shadows he looked even older. As he got closer, he also smelled something very strong, which lead him to shine the lantern on what he had in his hand: a bottle of cooking sherry. "So you've been down here drinking all night?"

Hart shook his head. "No, I've been down here trying to salvage my work all night. The drinking is a fairly recent development," he explained. He gestured to the table behind him. "That's what the military wants. A bomb powerful enough to destroy an entire city."

Edward lifted up his lantern and examined the metal ball on the table, eyeing the various switches and dials on it. Then he noticed something resting on the table next to the bomb: a gun. A standard-issue military pistol, to be exact. Probably left over from his days in the war.

"What are you doing with the gun?" Edward asked, reaching to take it. Hart had turned to face him, so he pulled his hand back, leaving the gun where it was resting.

Hart sighed. "I was having trouble designing a firing mechanism, and all the timer systems I rigged up were too unstable, so I was using that as some inspiration. The bomb is designed so that if it is launched at a high speed, such as from a cannon, it will explode on impact. However..." Hart put down the bottle and picked up the bomb, dropping it on the floor. Edward had shielded himself, expecting an explosion. "It needs to be struck at a very high speed to detonate. Prevents mishaps while handling." He didn't sound very proud of his safety feature. Instead, with great effort, he picked up his bomb and put it back on the table.

Edward looked over at the bomb, impressed that someone like Hart could have designed it, and at the same time wary of its capabilities. He also didn't trust Hart's techniques enough to want to be around a bomb that powerful of his design. "So you really did it?"

Hart nodded, picking up the bottle again and taking a drink. "Could you do me a very big favor, Edward?"

Edward looked over at him, quirking an eyebrow skeptically. "That depends. What do you want me to do?"

Hart waved his hand over to the bomb. "Destroy it for me. Don't detonate it. Just...take it apart, please. So that it can't be reassembled."

Edward widened his eyes, then looked at the bomb again. "But you just spent all this time making it! If you don't have it, the military is going to take away your State Alchemist certification! Your sponsor said he'd have you courtmartialed!"

"There are things more important than that, Edward," Hart explained patiently. "When I got this assignment, I immediately knew that it would be my undoing. Even if I succeeded, I didn't want to live with that many lives taken on my hands. I thought I would feel differently once I was finished, but I don't. I can't go through with it, Edward. Please, take it apart for me."

Edward was quiet, thinking over the request. He wouldn't mind taking apart that bomb and saving a few lives, but what would happen to Hart if he did? What would happen to _him_? If it was discovered that he had been the one who took apart a bomb that the military had ordered be made, he'd get in trouble for sure.

"Your brother is an empty suit of armor, isn't he?" Hart asked softly.

Edward jumped. "How do you know?"

Hart shook his head and took another drink. "It was mostly a hunch. He never eats or sleeps, or uses the bathroom. And I have yet to see him out of the armor. I'd heard rumors of things like that happening. Ferris, when we were still speaking, said that the military was experimenting with affixing human souls to various inanimate objects, but I didn't think it possible until I met your brother. I felt it would be rude to ask about it, though."

Edward looked back at the bomb again. "Yeah. Al lost his body, and I lost my arm and leg. We're trying to get them back."

"Human transmutation," Hart filled in. "Or am I completely mistaken? I haven't tried it myself. I would have considered it, but my own teacher attempted one once, and ended up dead for his efforts. Ferris had stories about other people who had attempted it that the military had found and disciplined. People who were missing a myriad of body parts, but all could use alchemy without a circle."

Edward met Hart's slightly unfocused eyes. "You mean there are a lot of people who try it?"

"Hardly. There were maybe five when Ferris was working in the investigation department," Hart explained. "And they'd been there quite a while. The punishment for attempting a human transmutation is supposed to be death, but apparently the military found them too fascinating to kill them outright. Ferris used to investigate misuse of alchemy for the military. While he was investigating my teacher's death, he met me and convinced his sponsor to sponsor me as a State Alchemist. We were both deployed to Ishbal shortly thereafter. I had no choice, but he volunteered after I got my orders."

Edward bristled uncomfortably. "Al and I tried to bring our mother back. I became a State Alchemist because I needed the research funding to help us with our goal: we want to restore our bodies to what they were before we tried to bring back Mom."

Hart put down his bottle and reached for the left sleeve of his shirt. "Edward, if I tell you something that no one in the military knows, something that may help you and your brother, will you destroy the bomb for me?"

Edward looked at Hart warily. "Something that could help us?"

Hart nodded. "But only if you destroy the bomb."

Edward looked at the bomb for a moment, then clapped his hands and put them on the metal sphere. The transmutation reaction caused Hart to shield his eyes, but when it was over, all that was left was a pile of metal plates and a pile of various chemicals in the center. Hart began to divide up the compounds, taking out a piece of chalk and drawing an array on the table. He placed some flasks on the array and moved the pieces of the bomb over to it, touching off the transmutation. All of the compounds were separated harmlessly into the flasks.

"Now tell me what you know," Edward demanded, secretly quite impressed by his little clean up trick.

Hart sighed and rolled up his left sleeve further, revealing an array tattooed onto his bicep. No, not an array...at first glance it seemed complete, but Edward quickly realized that it could do nothing. It was missing many key components. "During the war, Ferris, Renea, Cyrus, and I began a private project without the military's knowledge or support. It was really Ferris's idea, and he was the one who pursued it obsessively. We were trying to find a way to recreate human flesh. Not homunculi, humans from whole cloth, but body parts. It was what Ferris had heard about in the labs that inspired him to work on this project."

Hart took the picture of himself with his war friends and handed it to Edward. "Take this. After you leave here, go and visit Renea Walker. She retired from the military after the war, but she's not that hard to find. And demand to see Cyrus. Don't let her tell you she doesn't know where he is, because she does. Cyrus and Ferris kept the project going after the war, but Ferris is inaccessible now."

Edward looked at the picture. "Wait, are you saying you guys actually had some success?"

Hart nodded. "Ferris did, and Cyrus knows how he did it. Ferris made all of us put part of a transmutation circle on our bodies, but I don't know what exactly will happen if all of the parts are put together. I drew my part on the back of the picture, so that Renea will have no doubt who sent you." Hart took his watch out of his pocket and examined the time in the candle light. "And it's getting late. You should really be in bed."

Hart began to herd Edward back up the stairs, Edward too surprised to fight him about it. "What about you? Isn't your sponsor going to be back for the bomb?"

Hart smiled sadly. "Don't worry about me." He pushed Edward out of the laboratory and locked the door behind him.

Edward looked down at the picture in his hand, frozen in front of the door for a few minutes. Recreating human body parts...was it possible? This wasn't the Philosopher's Stone, but it was a promising lead, at any rate. Maybe this training wouldn't be useless...

A gunshot came from the basement, and Edward froze. He slowly looked at the door again, Alphonse running from the direction of the dining room. "Brother, what was that?! Brother?"

Edward continued to stare at the door, reaching for the doorknob. He began to turn it, then thought better of it. "Don't go down there, Al," he told his brother firmly. He then went into the direction of the living room to make a phone call, Alphonse following him worriedly.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Having called Central Headquarters and managed to get the message to Brigidier General Cromwell that Hart was dead, Edward had gone up to his and Al's room and put on his jacket and duster, then packed his few possessions into his suitcase. He even threw in the cookbook that Hart had leant him, although he wasn't entirely sure why. He placed the picture that Hart had given him between the pages and placed it neatly on top of his clothes, then went downstairs and out the front door just as the military's cars began to arrive.

Edward put his suitcase on the street and sat down on it, looking in the group of military investigators, trying to spot Hughes. He didn't seem to be in the group that had come to investigate, but he was surprised to see Roy climbing out of one of the cars. Roy started to head into the house, then noticed the boy sitting on his suitcase with the large suit of armor hovering over him worriedly, and changed his direction.

"Brigidier General Cromwell is demanding to know what happened," Roy started. "A lot of people are, and they're going to be asking you a lot of questions tonight. Think you can give me your side of the story first?"

Edward sighed, not moving from his place on his suicase. "When did you show up? Not even you're capable of getting from East City to Central in twenty minutes."

Roy tossed a glance at the military personnel that seemed to be filing into the house in droves. "I came earlier today. Hart called me last night and told me you'd be finished with your training tomorrow. I should have known something was wrong. He knew that I would have to confer with him before I could sign off on you having met the conditions of your reinstatement, and he never invited me to dinner."

"So does this mean you can't sign off on my having finished his useless cooking lessons?" Edward asked bitterly.

Roy sighed. "No, I think I can make an exception this one time, all things considered. So tell me: what happened here tonight?"

Edward tilted his head back to look up at Alphonse for a moment, then slumped over again. He wasn't even sure that Alphonse understood that the reason for all of the commotion was that Hart had died, although he had to have figured out that something had happened to him now.

"There's not much to tell," Edward started. "Hart spent the night in his lab working on his assignment. I went down to see if he was all right, he showed me what he made, took it apart again, then told me to go to bed and he'd be fine. Then he locked the door behind him and I heard a gunshot."

Roy didn't seem satisfied with this story. "Are you sure he shot himself? That it wasn't some other noise you heard?"

"He had a gun down there with him. I saw it. He was drunk and he was throwing away his career. I am pretty damn sure he didn't plan to come out of there alive," Edward snapped.

Roy's look told Edward that he knew there was more to the story than what he was telling him, but Edward didn't really care. He just wanted to get away from this house. Part of him was so angry at Hart for what he had done that he never wanted to take any advice he had given him, but the part of him that constantly lived in the hope that he would find a way to restore their bodies was itching to get to what was left of the library while he was in Central and look up the names that Hart had given him and find Renea Walker.

"Just wait here until everyone's done in the house," Roy finally ordered Edward, as if he seemed likely to move. "They're going to want to talk to you and compare what you said with whatever they found."

Edward could have commented on the fact that it sounded like Roy was accusing him of making up what had happened, but decided to voice the other thought he'd had. "Am I going to have any missions after this?"

Roy stopped where he had been turning to head toward the house, obviously considering this for a moment. "I don't believe so," he said at last. "There wasn't anything pending when I left East City. I'll have to call and ask Lieutenant Hawkeye if anything's come up since then, but if anything important had I certainly would have been informed while Central Command had me right here."

Edward nodded. "Then I'd like to take some personal time to follow a lead."

Roy looked over at Edward for another moment. "If nothing has come up, then after this mess is sorted out you can have your time off. I'm sure, all things considered, no one will blame you for wanting some personal time."

"Thank you, Colonel," Edward said with a nod, still staring at his feet. Roy went off toward the house, where people were starting to come out, but Edward didn't bother to look up and confirm that what he was sure happened had happened.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Alphonse followed Edward as he carried the small stack of folders over to a table, carrying his suitcase for him as he did so. Although it was very late at night, a flash of his watch was all Edward had needed to be allowed into the remnants of the library. In an unexpected but welcome flash of good luck, he discovered the files of the specific military personnel he needed to look up were still safe, if slightly smoke damaged. This would spare him from having to get Scieszka involved, at least.

Edward opened the last folder he had grabbed first, despite him having only picked it up on a whim: it was Hart's service record. Edward wasn't sure what he expected to find in there that he didn't know about the man, and other than the fact that is middle name was apparently "Estee", he really didn't find anything. His service record was short but flawless, detailing the role he'd played both during and after the war without delving too deeply into the specifics. This was not surprising to Edward, who was by now used to the military not making really valuable information easily accessible.

There was a file cross-referenced in Hart's, but when Edward had tried to find out what it concerned, he realized the numbers would have marked it a criminal investigation, which would have been one of the files destroyed in the fire. Edward gave up looking, briefly considering asking Scieszka for a copy of it, but then reminding himself that Hart _had_ told him what it would have said: that his teacher had died while attempting to perform a human transmutation, and the case had been looked into by Ferris Keyes.

This prompted Edward to look at Ferris Keyes' file next. Unlike Hart's, which had been short and clean, Colonel Ferris Domino Keyes' was very long and mixed, with just as much praise for his brilliant research and hard work as there were reprimands for his misconduct and tendency to barely toe the line of what was and wasn't permitted. Given the name "the Mosiac Alchemist", Edward couldn't seem to find a sufficient explanation for this name, other than the fact that in his career in the military he had held a number of jobs that would have required different skills.

Keyes had started his career unimpressively enough as a standard researcher, but was soon switched to the investigation department, where he investigated abuses of alchemy. He was apparently very good at that job, too, but gave it up to help fight in the war, where again his record became very vague and talked more of the reprimands he received than what he actually did. Following the war, he had gone to one of the labs as a researcher, where he remained until about five years prior to Edward reading his file. His file said that he had been checked into the psychiatric ward of Central Hospital, where he was to be held indefinitely. There was no record of him having ever been released, and nothing that said what had driven him there.

Setting that folder aside with Hart's, Edward picked up Cyrus Walker's next. His record was very short and, for the most part, unimpressive, with little good to say about the man other than he was a decent practical alchemist, if not a very dedicated researcher. Known as the "Natural Alchemist", he'd been very quick in a battle situation, but had a reputation for being lazy and unmotivated most anywhere else. He had briefly shined during the war, but afterwards he had been given a job assisting Amestrian towns with his alchemy, a job that he apparently hadn't done very well at. Just before his next evaluation, where it seemed impossible that he would be reinstated, Cyrus had disappeared entirely while out on a mission, and was currently wanted by the military for desertion.

Renea Walker's file, on the other hand, was similarly short, but far more flattering. Where Cyrus had only seemed to excel in battle, Renea, the "Water Alchemist", had been mediocre at best in a battle situation, but had excelled in research. In the war she had held her own on the front lines, but much of her work was usually behind the scenes, often alongside Hart. Within days of coming home from the frontlines, she had resigned, "loudly and publicly" as her file had put it. More importantly, her file made a note of the fact that she had since gotten married, and under the name Renea Cornig she was currently living in the town of Cervante, a note that had been made because the military apparently believed she knew where Cyrus was hiding, and bothered her on a fairly regular basis about it.

Edward picked up the folders again, taking them with him to find Alphonse in the stacks. "Al, we're going to Cervante," he announced, before turning around to go and put the folders back.

"Why?" Alphonse asked, following him. "Did Mr. Hart really give you a lead?"

Edward nodded. "Not much of one, but I did say I'd follow every possible lead until we got our bodies back..."

Alphonse looked at the names on the folders. "You were reading about Mr. Hart's friends? Are we going to try and find them?"

"Yeah. Well, there's only one we can actually find. Renea Walker," Edward confirmed. "Hart said that she would know something, or be able to point us toward someone who does."

Edward stepped out of the library, waving at the guard, and looked at the clock on the way out. It would be morning soon. They should be able to get on the first train out to Cervante in that case. Alphonse just took Edward's suitcase in his hand and followed him toward the train station.


	5. Cervante

**Chapter Five: Cervante**

The town of Cervante was only about half a day's train trip away from Central, a small town northeast of Central and close to North City, set on Silvras River. Many years ago, it had been known as a great alchemical think tank, where alchemists from all over the world gathered to share ideas and research, and where many of the world's most important alchemy-related discoveries had taken place. Rumor had it the first chimera was even created there.

But those days were long gone, stories of the town's heyday now only in the realm of alchemist lore, exhaggerated until Cervante sounded like it had once been a kind of alchemy paradise before the military had lured all of the alchemists away with promises of money and better equipment. The remaining alchemists had scattered after that, as the small number had spawned competitiveness rather than the original sense of comradere, and resources had been spread too thin.

Edward had never completely believed the stories of Cervante's greatness. He could believe that there had once been a place where alchemists had gathered and worked together (in theory, the military offered the same sort of thing, although the reality was far from that ideal), but he tended to think that if it had been such a great alchemy paradise, the military wouldn't have been able to bring an end to that so easily. Still, the possibility of any of the research that had taken place there still being there interested him greatly, and he knew at least one alchemist still lived there.

The river made the western border of the town, and it was surrounded by trees on both sides, a forest stretching to the west probably until it reached the eastern border of North City, while thinning out to reveal the town on the east. The train tracks ran parallel to the river through the woods on the west, and the train station was the only building on the west side of the river, a bridge taking people out of the station and into the town. Many important looking buildings seemed to be built on, around, or in the river this way, harnessing its flow to power various things.

"This place seems nice," Alphonse observed as they stepped off the bridge. Edward suddenly stopped after they were on the ground and began to look around, seemingly for something in particular.

"So we know Renea Walker is here somewhere, under the name Renea Cornig. How do we find her?" he asked, speaking more to himself than to his younger brother.

Edward could tell from the sound of plates scraping that Alphonse was shrugging. "I don't know, Brother. Maybe we could ask someone?" Before Edward could comment, Alphonse pointed out ahead of them. "Look at all the kids!"

Indeed, now that Edward took the time to look, there were children everywhere, with no adults in sight. Some of them were chasing each other, some were throwing around balls, some were pretending to swordfight with sticks, but there were a few small groups that were crouched down on the ground. For the first time, Edward noticed that the ground was littered with chalk drawings. Some of them were innocent, but some of them, he was surprised to find, were crude transmutation circles, similar to the kind he and Alphonse had made when they were first learning alchemy.

In one of the groups, Edward recognized a flash of light that signified a transmutation, but it was immediately followed by groans. The group abandoned what they had just drawn and moved to a fresh stretch of road to draw on, one of the children carrying something in her arms.

"Shouldn't someone be keeping an eye on them while they're using alchemy?" Edward asked, stunned by how young they seemed and how many of them were apparently doing it. He'd been under the impression that he and Alphonse starting to study it so young was an anomaly.

"Why? No one kept an eye on us," Alphonse pointed out. "I don't think they're doing anything dangerous. I don't even think they really know what they're doing. They don't seem to be having much success."

They suddenly heard a very loud splash, causing them both to jump and look to their right. Down the river a ways, separated from the other children, were two boys. One was crouched on the river bank, holding what seemed to be a white piece of paper to himself nervously. Standing knee-deep in the river was another, soggy looking boy. Both had short red hair, although the one on the shore's was quite light, more strawberry blonde than actual red, while the one in the water had familiar copper red hair.

"Elvin, I asked if you were ready! I didn't say _I_ was ready!" the boy in the river snapped, wading out of the river and back onto the shore.

The boy that was crouched on the river bank stood up, still clutching the paper. "Sorry, Brother," he said quickly.

The older brother reached to take the paper. "You did it wrong, anyway. Give it to me."

"No!" the younger boy screeched, yanking the paper out of the way. "I want to do it myself!"

"You're not doing it right! Give it to me!" the older boy demanded again, reaching around from all angles in an attempt to take the paper, but the younger brother turned away and held it away from him every time he reached for it.

The older boy finally gave up trying to take the paper, quickly reaching down for a stick. He scribbled something in the mud at the very edge of the river quickly, then tossed the stick away and leaned over, putting his hands on what he had just drawn. The light of a transmutation reaction radiated from it, and suddenly the mud fell away, a gyser of water shooting up for only a few seconds, before disappearing. It was enough: all of the water fell on the younger boy, drenching him and destroying the paper in his hands.

"I'm telling Mom!" the younger boy shrieked, crumpling up the soggy paper and lobbing it at his brother's head.

The older brother dodged the paper and stuck his tongue out at him. As his younger brother crouched down to sulk, the older boy stepped up to him. "You're just a crybaby," he accused. "You're only mad because I can do it and you can't!"

Edward and Alphonse looked at each other for a few moments, then, without saying a word to each other, both started walking toward the fueding brothers. The younger seemed to recover from the taunting as they approached, as he stood up and got closer to his older brother as the strangers approached, the older brother standing his ground and glaring at them. When they got closer, Edward could see that the younger brother had gray-green eyes, while the older brother had the same piercing green eyes that the woman in the picture had had.

Edward and Alphonse paused in front of the boys, looking down at them at them as if they were just as nervous around the brothers as the brothers were around them. The two younger boys couldn't have been older than seven or eight, and Edward knew that Cervante probably didn't get many visitors since the alchemists had left, so he couldn't really blame them for being nervous.

It was Alphonse who broke the silence. "Excuse me, but my brother and I were wondering if you knew where we could find Renea Cornig?"

The older brother stepped forward a little, craning his neck upward to try to meet Alphonse's glowing eyes. There was a long, tense moment where no one said anything. "You alchemists?" the boy asked at last.

"Yes, we are," Alphonse confirmed. He pointed at Edward. "Brother is a State Alchemist."

Edward gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to hit his younger brother. Renea Cornig's file had said she hadn't left the military on good terms, and that she was bothered regularly by the military for the whereabouts of her brother. As such, she may not take too kindly to the presence of a State Alchemist.

The older boy stepped over to Edward now, sizing him up. "You're too small to be a State Alchemist," he accused.

Edward opened his mouth to snap at him, but Alphonse interrupted him. "I assure you, Brother is a real State Alchemist. The youngest ever."

The boy considered this for a moment. "If you're a State Alchemist, show me your watch."

Edward was surprised by the request, but reached into his pocket and held his watch up by its chain. The boy reached for it, but Edward yanked it out of the way. "Believe us now?"

The boy snorted. "Yeah, whatever. Come on." He started to walk away, and Edward and Alphonse began to follow him. Suddenly, he stopped and turned around, looking behind Alphonse. "Elvin, come on!" The other boy ran to catch up with the group, and the boy lead them through the town, past groups of children (who stopped what they were doing to examine the strangers), and up to a modest looking house. The boy opened the door and stepped inside.

"Mom!" he shouted once they were inside. He motioned for Edward to stop as he went to step inside as well, then took of running through the living room and into what seemed to be a dining room, where there were two closed doors, Elvin stepping in and walking in the direction he had run in. "Mom!" the older boy shouted again.

"Silas, don't yell! Your sister's still taking a nap!" a female voice snapped from the general direction of one of the closed doors. "And don't run in the house!"

Silas didn't heed the first order, however. "But Mom, there are two alchemists here to see you and one of them's a State Alchemist! He showed me his watch and everything!"

Silas barely had a chance to jump out of the way as one of the doors burst open and his mother stepped out briskly, slamming it closed behind her and apparently also forgetting that her daughter was taking a nap. Edward immediately recognized the woman as Renea Walker, a.k.a. Renea Cornig, the woman in the photograph that Hart had given him. Her long red hair had been cut off short since it had been taken, and her face looked a bit older and more worn, but it was definitely her.

Edward also noticed that she was currently dressed as he would imagine an alchemist who was working to be dressed: she was wearing goggles over her piercing green eyes, which she pulled down around her neck as she glared in the direction of the door, and she was wearing a long, brown leather coat, the sleeves ending about halfway down her forearms, and on her hands were thick black leather work gloves, which she yanked off and stuck into her coat pocket. She was also wearing tan cargo pants, the legs of which were tucked into black combat boots, and a white tank top that minimized her bustline. But interestingly, she still had a bandage taped over her right cheek, just below her eye, as well as the dangling earring she'd had in the picture, which Edward could see had a transmutation circle engraved onto the charm.

Renea strode up to the door, taking it into her hand. "I've told you people a thousand times already: I don't have anything to say to any of you. I don't know where my brother is, and even if I did, I wouldn't tell you anything! Now leave me and my family alone!" She slammed the door in their faces.

Edward and Alphonse glanced at each other. Well, that hadn't gone as well as they had hoped it would. Slowly, Edward raised his hand and knocked lightly. "Mrs. Cornig, we're not here on military business. They don't even know we're here. We're here because Calvinia Hart sent us. He told us to see you just before he died."

The door began to open again slowly, and Renea stood on the other side, her expression reflecting her surprise. Edward realized then that she wasn't that much taller than him. From the picture, he'd expected her to be taller. "Cal's dead?" she asked. Edward nodded, and with a sigh, Renea opened the door and stepped aside, letting them come into her house. Once they were inside, Renea closed the door behind them and turned to look in the direction of the dining room, where her sons were standing, watching the exchange.

"Silas, go upstairs and get your sister," she ordered.

"But Mom-" Silas started.

Renea held up her hand in a silencing gesture. "Go upstairs and get Celia. I told you what to do, now do it. And take Elvin with you. I want you both out of those wet clothes. Honestly, how many times do I have to tell you two not to play near the river?"

Silas began to mutter things that didn't sound partiuclarly happy, but went back into the living room and toward the stairs. Elvin followed him up the stairs like a shadow, and Renea waited until she could no longer see their forms before turning back toward Edward and Alphonse, beckoning them to follow her with her index and middle fingers. They obeyed, following her through the living room and to the door opposite the one she had originally come out of, which she opened to reveal a kitchen. Again, she waited until they were inside to close the door behind them.

"How did it happen?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

Edward sighed. "He killed himself," he told her, surprised at how easy it was to say now, compared to the night before after it had happened, where it seemed to get harder for him to think about with each retelling of the story. "Just last night."

Renea narrowed her eyes. "And how do you know?"

"I was there," Edward confessed, staring at his feet and ignoring the feel of the woman's gaze on him. "I'd been living with him for a little while while he gave me cooking lessons."

Renea laughed, but it was hollow and humorless. "Who'd you piss off to earn that?"

Well, if he needed confirmation that this woman knew Hart, that would have been it. "No one. I got a bad review during my State Alchemist evaluation and got put on conditional reinstatement. My sponsor thought cooking lessons would fix the problem, for some reason I can't figure out. I just got fully reinstated again last night, after..."

Renea examined Edward for a moment. "You're the State Alchemist? Then who's that?" She pointed at Alphonse with her thumb.

Alphonse rubbed the back of his helmet nervously. "I'm Alphonse Elric, his younger brother. He's Edward Elric."

"So the military is recruiting kids now..." Renea muttered. She pulled herself up onto the counter, bending over so that she didn't hit her head on the cupboards that were mounted above it. "I'm so glad I left when I did. The things they're doing lately....Silas, get away from the door! What did I tell you about eavesdropping?!" There was the sound of a foot stomping, and then footsteps heading away from the door.

"How'd you know he was there?" Alphonse asked, mystified. He hadn't even heard the boy approach the door.

"He always eavesdrops when I have company," Renea explained. She looked at Edward again. "So I take it Cal didn't just send you here to tell me he'd killed himself."

Edward shook his head, but thought about how she had reacted when she thought he was here to ask her about her brother. He needed to earn her trust before he approached that subject, and maybe he could get what she knew about the project as well, even if Hart had implied she wouldn't be willing to talk about it. "I'm here to talk about alchemy, actually."

"I have nothing to teach a State Alchemist," she told him, reaching into one of the cupboards behind her and pulling out a glass. She leaned over and filled it in the sink.

"No, it's not that. I am just talking to as many alchemists I can. My brother and I are looking for something, so we like to compare notes," Edward explained, hoping Alphonse would take the hint and keep his mouth shut.

A few moments passed in silence, and Edward was simultaneously relieved that Alphonse was willing to play along with what he had said, and worried that Renea would throw him out again. Renea sipped from her glass of water, then sighed. "Well, this town _did_ used to encourage alchemists to share ideas, and it's trying to get that reputation again. I'm even teaching alchemy to local children for money, although I am having little to no success outside of my own boys. I suppose having a couple more alchemists around would give the townspeople some hope, at the very least."

Renea finished her glass of water, then hopped off of the counter, dropping the glass into the sink. "Silas, since you're out there anyway, get in here." The door opened, and Silas peeked in sheepishly, then stepped in all the way, closing the door behind him. "Go upstairs and set up your room for Celia, so our guests can have her room."

Alphonse started to protest, but Silas interrupted. "What?! Why does she have to stay in our room! Can't she stay in your room with you?!"

"When I ask you to do something, it means you do it now, not that you get to argue with me about it," Renea said warningly. Silas glared at the new arrivals, then left the kitchen to do as he was told. She watched the door for a few moments, then turned to look at the Elric brothers again. "I still can't believe Cal's dead. I'm not surprised he killed himself, since I always figured he would if he didn't find a way out of the military..." She sighed. "I tried to get him to resign when I did, but that ass Ferris talked him into staying, and Cal always did whatever Ferris told him to, even if it was all wrong for him. The poor guy was much too sensitive for military life, kitchen demeanor not withstanding."

Renea pushed open the door, motioning the brothers out into the dining room. "The rules here are simple: don't go into my lab unless it's with me. Nothing personal, I'm just really protective of it. It's hard enough to keep Silas out of it when I'm not in there. And don't set a bad example for the kids. I don't think you will, but if they develop any new bad habits while you're here, I'll hold you two personally responsible. Enjoy the town, and I'll have dinner ready soon...ish."

Silas came running downstairs then, slowing to a walk when he realized his mother was standing in the dining room. "Room's all ready, but Celia better not touch our stuff," he announced, his eyes daring her to say anything to the contrary. Elvin suddenly appeared from another part of the dining room, followed by a tiny girl who couldn't have been older than four, who was wearing a blue dress. Her hair was copper red and shoulder-length, and she was rubbing one of her amber eyes sleepily, a rag doll with red yarn hair and a pink dress pressed against her with her other hand.

"Kids, as you've probably figured out, we've got a couple of alchemists staying with us for a little while," Renea announced. "This is Edward Elric and his older brother Alphonse. Treat them with the same respect you'd treat any adult who is staying here with us."

Alphonse rubbed his helmet nervously again. "Actually, I'm a year younger than Brother..."

"Oh. You're so much bigger than him...well, I guess anyone would be, in a suit of armor like that," Renea mused. She pointed toward the children. "I think you two have already met Silas and Elvin, and with them is their little sister, Celia."

Elvin stepped up to Alphonse, staring up at him quizzically. "Are you really younger than your brother?" he asked at last.

Alphonse nodded. "Yes, I am," he said cheerfully.

Elvin grinned broadly, then ran over to Silas. "See? I told you I could grow up to be bigger than you! Alphonse is younger and he's _much_ taller than his brother!"

"I'm still gonna be bigger than you!" Silas shot back.

"Are not!"

"Am too!"

"Are not!"

"Elvin, Silas, cut that out," Renea ordered. "Elvin, you have to get to your piano lessons, and Mrs. Dorning's son is an unholy terror to teach alchemy to, so you'd better enjoy every minute. Silas, go with your brother, and I expect both of you to make it home in one piece."

The boys were both muttering as they headed out the front door, tossing another glance at their guests before disappearing out the door. Renea walked up to Celia and picked her up. "And you get to help Mama cook dinner for our guests," she told her cheerfully.

"Yay!" Celia cried, throwing her arms in the air as Renea took her into the kitchen.

Edward just blinked a few times at the door, and found himself wondering if he was going to have enough patience to stay here long enough to get the information he needed.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Edward and Alphonse didn't see the boys again until it was time to sit down for dinner. Alphonse had tried to encourage some nostalgia involving himself and Edward when they were Silas and Elvin's ages, but Edward steadfastly denied they had ever been anything like them, insisting they had been much more mature and only argued about "important" things (Alphonse listing such "important" arguments as who was going to marry Winry when they grew up and who would be taller only prompted an order to shut up).

"Elvin messed up _so_ many times on the piano," Silas announced, picking at his food.

Elvin turned to glare at him. "You don't even play at all!"

"But Mrs. Dorning was telling you to fix your mistakes a lot," Silas shot back.

"Silas, Elvin just started learning how to play. It'll take a long time for him to get any good," Renea pointed out. "You weren't so good at alchemy when you first started."

"I hate piano lessons, Mom," Elvin whined. "How come I have to take them and Brother doesn't?"

Renea seemed unruffled by the whining, instead spearing a green bean with her fork. "Because when Mrs. Dorning wanted me to teach her son alchemy and only had piano lessons to offer, you two argued over who would get to go and damn near tore each other apart when I found out Celia was too young to go. Then I arbitrarily chose you, Elvin. And you were so excited about it, too." She leaned on her hand and nibbled the bean. "I hope the next person can't pay offers something like tutoring. Then your brother will be covered."

"Mrs. Cornig?" Alphonse asked, picking at the food in front of him and waiting for a distraction so he could dump it onto Edward's plate.

Renea looked over at him. "Call me Miss Renea. Everyone else does, my children excluded."

Alphonse nodded. "Miss Renea, is it really okay teaching all of the children in town alchemy?"

Renea shrugged. "It's hardly all of them. Nine or ten at the most, excluding my boys. I make the parents promise me they'll work with their children on it. Whether they do or not isn't my problem. Keep in mind this wasn't my idea: I agree that most children are far too young to get it. Silas and Elvin grew up around alchemy, what with their mother being an alchemist, so they took to it quickly, but since Dennis died I've been a bit desperate for money, so I figured it couldn't hurt to go through the motions and hope something sticks." She took a sip of water. "A lot of the locals don't get that it's a complicated science. You or I can make it look easy, but because Silas and Elvin are learning, the townspeople are under the impression it's something simple even a child can grasp."

Edward, who was sitting between Alphonse and Celia, just nodded in agreement with what Renea had said. Well, at least she wasn't expecting to produce a town full of alchemy prodigies. He felt a tug at his sleeve, and looked down at Celia, who was holding her doll tightly.

"I like your hair," she said shyly. "It's really pretty."

Edward looked down at the little girl, clearly surprised by her remark. He finally smiled nervously. "Um...thanks."

Celia's smile seemed a little more confident now. She held up her doll. "Do you like dolls? I do!"

Edward looked nervously over at Alphonse, then back at the girl. "Not really. But she's a very pretty doll."

"Celia, let Edward eat his dinner in peace," Renea ordered, before taking another bite. Celia looked over at her mother, then put her doll back down into her lap and picked at her food some more.

Silas apparently took this time where his mother's mouth was full and she couldn't speak to initiate his own conversation, continuing to pick at his food without eating it. "Hey, you're a State Alchemist, right?" he asked. When Edward nodded, he continued. "So what's your State Alchemist name?"

Renea nearly choked on what she was eating, as Edward answered, without regard for the woman's reaction. "Fullmetal," he said easily. He then looked over at Renea, whose eyes were narrowed. She glared at him for a moment, then back at her son.

"Silas, I've told you before, we don't talk about that," she told him sternly. "And eat your dinner. It's getting cold."

Silas ignored the order to eat, arranging his food into a pattern. "You said I couldn't talk about when _you _were a State Alchemist. You never said I couldn't talk about someone else who was." He speared a green bean and nibbled it as his mother continued to glare at him, apparently not amused by his semantics argument. "And Uncle Cyrus. You said we couldn't talk about him." Elvin elbowed Silas, and Silas pushed him back.

Renea put her fork down and stood up, pointing toward the living room. "Silas, go to your room. Now."

"But what about my dinner?!" Silas whined, pulling his plate toward him.

"You weren't eating it, anyway. And you should have thought of that before you deliberately brought up things I have asked you not to speak of. Things you wouldn't know at all if you didn't keep eavesdropping," Renea told him, still standing and pointing.

Silas got up and slammed his chair into the table as he tucked it in, stomping out of the dining room, through the living room, and up the stairs. Edward watched, wondering if he had been as bad as him when he'd been his age. There was another tug at his sleeve, and Edward looked down at Celia again.

"Um...after dinner, do you want to come up to see my room?" she asked, looking away shyly again.

Renea sat back down and smiled at her daughter. "I think someone's got a crush on you, Edward. Celia, Edward's going to be busy after dinner, but he's going to be staying in your room so I promise you can be the one to show it to him, all right?"

Celia nodded happily and began to eat again. Edward disliked other people deciding his fate, but curbed his annoyance. He could deal with a four year old's affections, and besides, something else Renea had said interested him. "Busy? Howso?"

Renea shrugged. "I thought I'd bring you into the lab. You're an alchemist. You said you were here because you were interested in alchemy, and I'm not going to miss an opportunity to let a State Alchemist critique my work, as long as said alchemist doesn't then go to report my research to the military. I'll even be very generous and assume that the military recruited you so young because you were some sort of prodigy and not because kids are easier to manipulate than adults."

Edward opened his mouth, but the annoyed expression on his face caused Alphonse to nudge him. Edward closed his mouth, glaring at her for a moment, and received a glare in return. Finally, he said "I'd like that. Thanks."

"Wonderful," Renea said. "Might as well give you your money's worth. Or the military's money's worth." Renea turned and looked at Elvin. "Elvin, when we finish dinner, go and get your brother so you two can do the dishes." Elvin nodded and didn't offer a complaint.

After that, dinner mostly passed in silence, although Edward was sure he could feel a pair of amber eyes glancing up at him from the general vacinity of his left side...


	6. Family

**Chapter Six: Family**

"The great thing about Cervante is that all of the houses come standard with alchemy labs," Renea explained. "What other people do with the room clearly designed to be a lab is both interesting and apalling, but for actual alchemists like myself, it's more than I ever could have hoped for."

She flipped a switch, and several lamps turned on at once, revealing several tables full of flasks and beakers of fluids, burners, and other equipment and materials. Like Hart's lab, there were many arrays drawn everywhere, some very complicated, some more crude and simple, and many blackboards of notes. But unlike Hart's lab, the handwriting was impeccable, and the words were perfectly spelled.

"Goggles on," Renea said, taking a pair off a hook next to the door and handing them to Edward. She then moved hers from around her neck to back over her eyes, then pulled her gloves from her pocket and tugged them on. "Those are Silas's, and he begged me for months to let him have his own goggles, so be careful with them. If you break them, I can't afford to replace them and he'll stab you in your sleep."

Edward was angry that he had been offered a child's goggles, but found he couldn't complain: they fit without him having to adjust them. He slid them over his eyes, then followed Rena when she beckoned him to a table. Alphonse stayed close to the doorway.

"Why are you staying over there?" she asked Alphonse, motioning him closer as well. "I don't have goggles for you, but I'll assume whatever you have in that helmet to make your eyes glow like that will protect your eyes. Correct me if I'm wrong."

Alphonse approached her. "No, this is fine. I just wasn't sure if you only wanted Brother to see or not. He's the State Alchemist, after all."

Renea shrugged. "You're an alchemist, too. I'm more interested in that part than I am in the 'state' part." She lifted up one of the beakers, which had a clear, pinkish fluid inside of it. She offered it to Edward, who took it, trying to figure out what it was from the look of it.

Renea seated herself up on the table, smiling as Edward examined the contents. "That's my current pet project. I let Silas help once in a while, too. When I'm done with it, it's going to be a substitute for blood for people who need transfusions. I've got most of the appropriate proteins together, and most of the time people don't reject it, but I have to tweak it for various bloodtypes. I want it to be universal."

Edward looked at her over the beaker. "Isn't that close to human transmutation? Too close for comfort?" He was especially unnerved by her suggestion that she had been testing it on humans.

Renea shrugged. "Apparently not. Admittedly I haven't called the military and asked them if it's all right, but nothing bad has come of it so far. If I can pull this off, it will do a lot of people a lot of good. That's what alchemy is supposed to be." She took the beaker away from him and put it back on the table.

Edward eyed the slightly pink fluid some more. "Why did you leave the military?" he asked her, poking the glass a little with the index finger of his left hand. "I mean, I have an idea from what you just said, but I'd really like to know."

Renea narrowed her eyes behind her goggles, and Edward looked over his shoulder, suddenly feeling nervous. Would she be angry at him for asking? She was quiet for a long time. Finally, she sighed. "I was pretty much recruited just for the war, as was my brother. I had the common sense to realize I was being used, and Cyrus didn't. I stayed for a little while, but after I got to the labs and realized what was really going on, I didn't want any part of it. I gave a formal resignation, but when my sponsor and other high ranking officers tried to get me to change my mind and strongly implied they didn't intend to accept my resignation, I made my infamous public resignation. I haven't been their favorite person since, and Cyrus running away hasn't helped matters any."

She sighed, moving to another part of her laboratory and taking a book out of her book case. She flipped through the pages idly. "I'd advise anyone who wants to help the world and do the right thing to avoid the military, alchemist or not. And Silas, stop eavesdropping!"

There was the sound of feet stomping away on the other side of the room, and Renea closed the book, putting it back. "I don't think Cal had the strength to leave, even with me and Cyrus encouraging him to. Cyrus was still in the military at the time and had no intention of leaving, and even he thought Cal wasn't suited for it. Cyrus was strangely close to Cal, despite them hardly being one another's types, and he was afraid of something like what happened happening to him."

"What about Cyrus?" Edward tried, wondering if it was too soon to approach that subject with her.

Renea, who had just pulled another book from the bookcase, slammed it down hard on the nearest table, rattling the glass containers and metal instruments. "You told me you didn't care about him or where he went."

Edward rubbed the back of his head nervously. "I didn't ask where he is," he said quickly. "I was just wondering...if you knew why he ran."

"Why do you think he ran?" Renea snapped angrilly. "I'm sure you've seen his file! He was about to lose his certifcation, and he was an idiot! He never thinks about more than five minutes into the future! He ran because he thought it was better than having his certifcation revoked. He probably thought he'd be marked as MIA, not become wanted. He'd come back, show off a little, and everyone would be so amazed that he had escaped some horror he'd get reinstated. Instead now he's not only not a State Alchemist, but the military is trying to get their hands on him." She put the book back and leaned heavily against the book case. "He's always been like that. He's so smart, but he's such a moron."

Alphonse stepped closer to her. "But you miss him, don't you? He's still your brother, after all..."

Renea nodded. "I took care of him and protected him. Now I worry sick every day, wondering what he's gotten himself into that I could have stopped or gotten him out of."

"So you'd probably want to find him?" Alphonse continued.

Renea turned to gaze at him. "Yes. I wouldn't mind finding him. Because I don't know where he is right now. Now I think we've seen quite enough." She strode toward the door of the laboratory, pushing it a little harder than necessary.

"Ow!" Silas cried, stepping back and rubbing the side of his head.

"Go to bed. Now," Renea snapped. "Your brother and sister, too. Everyone, just go to bed."

Renea went through the living room and stomped up the stairs. Edward, Alphonse, and the children were all left stunned in the dining room.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

There was only one bed in the room that clearly belonged to a young girl, and it was tiny, clearly meant for a child. Which is why Edward resented that he fit into it, although just barely. He discovered this after an insistance that he wouldn't, but a very persistant four year old girl had convinced him to try it. Said four year old currently had no idea how fortunate she was that Edward knew how to filter his anger when in the company of small children, although he was not happy to do so. A futon had been laid out on the floor with bedding, ostensibly for Alphonse to sleep on.

Celia was currently sitting on the pink bedding, watching Edward intently. His duster was laid over her toybox, and his jacket was thrown into his opened suitcase as he began to oil and clean his automail.

"Why's your arm like that?" Celia asked, leaning over to touch it, but changing her mind, leaning back suddenly and clutching her doll close to her.

Edward looked over at her, wanting to say something less than friendly, but seeing her curled up and frightened of his automail actually hurt him a little. He smiled sadly, then held up his arm. "It's not real. It's automail, because I don't have a real one anymore."

"Oh," Celia side, her eyes going wide. Edward continued to hold his arm up until she hesitantly reached out and touched the elbow. "It's all cold..."

Edward knew that Alphonse was watching, and if he were capable of facial expressions, he would have looked quite sad at this scene. He sighed and put his arm down, continuing his maintainence on it.

"How come you don't have a real arm?" Celia asked, still watching with rapt interest.

Edward had been afraid of her asking that. He sighed, thinking about how to phrase his response to that question without giving too much away. "When I was younger, I did something very bad that I wasn't supposed to, and I lost my arm and leg." He lifted up his left pant leg enough to reveal the metal of his left leg. "So I had to get these parts to replace them."

Celia had been watching his demonstration of which parts of his body were artificial with awe. She poked the knee of his left leg, her hand retreating as she felt the telltale unyielding metal underneath the leather. "What did you do bad? Did you leave the house without your mama watching you?"

Edward flinched a little, then shook his head. "No, something a lot worse that I can't really talk about." He put the oil away, noting that he would have to perform some maintenance on Alphonse when he was sure that everyone else in the house was asleep. "Shouldn't you be in bed? Your mother seemed pretty mad..."

Celia nodded and walked over to the door. "Good night, Edward. Good night, Alphonse." She left the room, shutting the door behind her, both brothers just managing to get out "Good night" simultaneously as she did so.

Alphonse looked back over at Edward. "What is it with you and little girls, Brother?"

Edward threw himself back on the bed with a sigh. "I don't know. Kids in general ask too many questions. Speaking of which..." He stepped up to the door, listened for a few moments, then opened it and looked down at Silas.

Silas looked up at him and smiled nervously. "Um....just checking and making sure you were all right. I know a State Alchemist probably doesn't want some little girl's room-"

"We're fine, thank you. Go to bed," Edward ordered. Silas blinked a few times, then turned and left in a huff, going back into what was ostensibly his room. Edward shut the door and went back into the bed. "Now I know how his mother does that..."

"Miss Renea said that he was always eavesdropping and that's how she always knows he's there," Alphonse pointed out, as if trying to make him realize catching Silas listening in to their conversation was not the great feat he seemed to think it was.

Edward just snorted. "All right, so we know that asking her about her brother isn't going to be very easy, and I doubt asking her directly about the project will be, either. We need to think of a better course of action."

Alphonse shrugged, moving from his place in the corner over to the futon, where he sat down in front of the bed. Edward turned himself around on the bed and flipped onto his stomach, reaching over to take out Alphonse's oil and the rags to clean him.

"You could just try to be nice to her," Alphonse pointed out. Edward, deciding he didn't want to get off the bed just yet, started scrubbing his back. "I mean, you were getting along with her just fine until you brought up her brother. If she trusts you a little more, maybe she'll believe you if you tell her that you don't want to know where he is for the military, and you won't report her involvement in the project."

Edward was quiet for a few moments. He didn't speak until after he had climbed onto the floor to work on Alphonse's right arm. "There's something that's bothering me about her daughter. Did you notice her eyes?"

"Yes," Alphonse confirmed, holding his arm out so his brother could do his job. "They're the same color as Cyrus's. So what? He's her uncle. It's not that unusual that she could get some features from him as well as from her parents."

Edward bit his lip as he worked off a particularly stubborn spot of mud. "I guess so," he agreed at last. But there was something still bothering him about the little girl...

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Edward had to admit, it felt good to be able to sleep in as long as he wanted to again. He had never fully gotten used to waking up at dawn to start cooking breakfast with Hart, and although the circumstances were less than ideal, it was best to look at the bright side. Wondering idly what time it was, but not daring to check his watch, he began to head downstairs, noticing that Alphonse seemed to have already done so.

Edward got dressed, deciding to forgo a shower for the time being until he knew what time it was, where his brother was, and what there was for him to eat. Pulling on his jacket and gloves, he left his duster and suitcase in the room and headed downstairs. He couldn't see anyone at first, but was surprised to see that the clock showed it was almost noon. Considering it had been fairly early when he had gone to bed, this was most surprising.

He found both Renea and Alphonse in the kitchen, Renea sitting on a counter top again while Alphonse seemed to be cooking something. Edward looked at Alphonse first, then Renea, then Alphonse again. "She has you cooking for her?" he asked him.

"No, Brother," Alphonse said. He indicated to the pots and pans on the stove. "I offered to help Miss Renea make lunch, but when she saw how much I learned form Mr. Hart, she thought this meal would be a good tribute to him, and since I learned from him and was so good then I should prepare it."

Edward wasn't sure if this was the truth, or just what she had told him to make him cook lunch for her. He highly suspected it was the latter, but he had no proof, and besides, Alphonse seemed content in cooking and believing he was doing so to honor his late cooking instructor's memory. And Edward was supposed to be nice to Renea, after all, if he wanted her to trust him enough to give him information regarding Cyrus Walker or the project they had once worked on. He disliked Alphonse being used, but if he was happy, then there really wasn't any harm done.

"We were about ready to give you up for dead," Renea announced. "You were sleeping an awful long time. Your brother was awfully worried about you. I guess it must have been a tough trip, huh?"

"Yeah, it was," Edward said idly, as his mind was busy turning over what she'd said. It made sense to him now why he'd slept so much: he hadn't slept the night that Hart had died. He had been interrogated for a good portion of the night, and then had been in the library until sunup, and had still not slept much on the train to Cervante. And he had been awake steadily after that, hardly noticing he was tired. No wonder he had slept so much...

"Well, lunch will be ready shortly. I sent the kids out together on an errand, and hopefully they'll be home in time," Renea further explained. She looked at the clock in the kitchen. "In fact, they probably should have been home by now." She cracked her knuckles. "I really don't want to have to go and find them again..."

Edward noticed that she must have been in her laboratory already that day, as she was wearing her coat and goggles again. Unless, of course, she always wore both. He stepped up behind Alphonse, ready to help him, but Alphonse only waved him away and kept on chopping.

"It's all right, Brother. I've got it," he assured him, dumping the vegetables he had just chopped into a pot of boiling water. "You can worry about other things."

Renea nodded. "Yeah. Come up here. Plenty of counter space to go around. We can worry about where my kids disappeared to together." Edward walked up to her and sat up on the counter next to her, although not too close. At least she seemed to have decided to be friendly toward him again, despite the previous day's outburst. He wasn't going to bring it up again, though.

Edward had just settled onto the counter when the sound of hurried footsteps could be heard. Renea sighed, then shouted "Silas, don't run in the-"

"MOM!" Silas shouted back, interrupting as he burst through the door, panting heavily. Renea seemed to deem this condition one that required serious attention, as a worried look crossed her face and she dropped down off of the counter, stepping up to her son. Without prompting, he panted "the river! Elmyra fell in...she's too far out....the water wheel..."

"Dammit!" Renea shouted, rushing through the kitchen door and shedding her coat along the way. Silas, Edward, and Alphonse rushed after her, Silas gathering her discarded coat as they chased after her. Edward then noticed the bandage wrapped around her left arm, where her tattoo would be, but now was hardly the time to inquire about it.

It was difficult to figure out where the trouble was: a crowd of people were gathered on both sides of the river. Some people were trying to swim in, but were caught up in the flow of the nearby water wheel and had no choice but to turn back. Others were already wading in to try their luck. In the center of the river, clinging to a rock that was barely poking out of the rapids, was a tiny girl with blonde pigtails who was screaming for help, the water threatening to pull her into the menacing wooden blades of the wheel.

"Miss Renea!" someone shouted as she approached the crowd, but Renea didn't acknowledge them at all, pushing her way through the crowd.

"Step back!" she ordered. "Everyone out of the water! Now!" People scrambled to do as she had told them, Silas pushing his way through the crowd and dangerously close to the bank, but she didn't seem to notice him there, or otherwise didn't mind.

With everyone on the shore and out of the way, Renea quickly waded in to her waist, not displaying the discomfort she surely must have been feeling from the cold water. The rapids threatened to take her away, but she still took a very deep breath and dove under the water and out of sight. The crowd gasped, sure that the current from the water wheel would pull her in.

It seemed like Renea had been underwater for far too long, when Edward knew that less than a minute had probably passed by. Suddenly, a bright flash of light came from the river, and the people all gasped again, shielding their eyes as the light fanned out into a dome, pushing the water out of the way and creating a path through the river that emcompassed the rock the girl was clinging to. Standing in the path was Renea, her face reflecting intense concentration, her hand cupped around her dangling earring, which was spinning very fast.

Edward realized then what she had done: she had divided the water into its composite elements of hydrogen and oxygen, and was continuing to do so with the water that threatened to close in on the field she'd created. She surely couldn't maintain the effort much longer, however.

Silas darted down the path, grabbing the girl and tugging her back to the shore. The water came crashing back down on him just as the girl was pulled to shore by people standing there, Silas getting soaked and being dragged a few meters down the river, but managing to get back up on shore afterwards.

All eyes were on the river now, waiting expectantly to see if the hero of the day would resurface. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, and Edward realized that he was, as well. He even contemplated jumping in to try and get her, but he knew that he couldn't swim, and if the water wheel didn't drag him in, then his automail would weigh him down and drown him.

Finally, a bright, copper-colored blur erupted from the water, and Renea took a deep breath. She waded out of the water, dripping wet and coughing. She spat out some water as her feet touched dry land, and the crowd began to cheer enthusiastically. Silas, equally wet and dripping, darted up to her, picking up her coat as he did so.

Edward noticed then that the cloth covering her tattoo was gone, and he stared hard at it, wishing he had something to draw it on so he could add it to the part that Hart had given him. The best he could do was try to commit it to memory and, after adding it, change it as needed until it made sense to him. Her bandage had also soaked off in the river, revealing a very jagged, ugly scar just beneath her left eye. It wasn't very large, but Edward could tell why she would rather conceal it with something as obvious as a bandage rather than deal with the stares and questions about its origin.

"Mom, that was so awesome!" Silas exclaimed, holding up her coat. Renea took it from him and pulled it on as he continued to prattle on. "I knew you could do it! The second I saw her in the river I said 'I'll go get Mom, she can save her with alchemy', and then you did it! That was the coolest! I want to do that, too!"

Elvin had emerged from the crowd as well, leading Celia by the hand. Celia had wet trails on her face from crying, and Elvin looked immensely relieved, contrasting with Silas's overjoyed reaction at his mother's dangerous rescue.

"This is why I don't want you three to play near the river unless I'm around!" Renea finally snapped, heading back in the direction of her house. "You have plenty of time to learn alchemy! What if that had been one of you two, and I weren't in town to help you?! What then?!"

Silas looked shocked at the reprimand. After all, it hadn't been _him_ who had needed to be rescued. "Yes, Mom," he said, nodding quickly. Elvin also nodded, and Celia ran over to cling to her mother's damp leg. Renea leaned down and picked her up, using her coat to dry her eyes.

Edward and Alphonse just quietly followed the family back into the house.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"My brother and I were born in Thare," Renea confessed, not looking up from her work. This was in response to Edward having asked her where she learned her water alchemy, which she had used again to dry off herself and Silas, converting all of the water on their clothes and in their hair into hydrogen and oxygen again. She had looked worn out after that, but had insisted the Elric brothers come into her laboratory with her.

Renea handed Edward a container. "Heat this up for me." Edward put it down on the table, clapping his hands and putting them on the beaker. The contents heated immediately. Renea gave him a questioning look, then shrugged and continued what she was doing. "We didn't really know who our parents were, but considering we were born in Thare, that should be obvious."

Indeed, Renea didn't have to say anything more: Thare was a well-known crime capitol, a place so overrun by gamblers, thieves, prostitutes, and violent thugs that the military gave up trying to bring order to it, instead closing down all routes that lead to it and issuing stiff penalties for any military personnel that visited the town when they weren't assigned to. If anyone said they were going to South City and taking a three day walk, that was a coded way of saying that they planned to visit Thare, as it was more or less a three day walk if one traveled in a straight line southeast from South City. There were children in the town, but they were the children of the prostitutes for the most part, training to become scoundrels themselves and keep the town's "values" alive in the next generation.

"In Thare, they say the people can only understand two languages: money and alchemy. Money is what everyone there wants, and whoever has the most of it rules the city, and they fear alchemy. It's the science of sciences, the one that shows the most immediate and frightening results. Not being intelligent enough to learn it themselves, the people steer clear or respect those that can."

"But you and your brother learned it," Alphonse pointed out, watching Renea and Edward work. He had offered to help as well, after discarding the burnt remains of the lunch he'd had to abandon during the emergency, but so far hadn't been assigned a task. Edward wondered if, for all Renea claimed to hate the military, she only trusted Edward with her work because he was State Alchemist and she had tangible proof of his genius.

Renea nodded. "That we did," she agreed. "There was an old man who came to Thare one day, just out of the blue. He was an alchemist, and people either wanted him to do things for them or avoided him entirely. He claimed he had once lived in Cervante in its heyday, which is what gave me the idea to come here myself after I resigned from the military. Anyway, he started looking around the town and he found me and my brother, and I don't know what he saw in us, but he took us out of Thare to train us."

"And that's who taught you water alchemy?" Edward concluded, holding up a beaker to the light and recording the results of what he had seen in the notebook Renea had provided for him.

"No. Well, sort of," Renea answered. "His teaching style, and the way he was taught, had the alchemical properties and uses of the elements as lesson number one. Well, lesson number two, since the laws of equivilant exchange and the major taboos of alchemy were lesson number one. The elements weren't really his focus; it was the foundation, and being our first lesson, it was the first thing Cyrus and I had to practice with. I took to water, and he took to plants and soil, and it stuck. Before we joined the military, we had the arrays we used most often put on earrings so that we could always have them handy if we needed them. Unfortunately for Cyrus, there wasn't much in terms of plants and soil out in the desert, but he improvised with sand."

Renea wiped the sweat off of her brow and readjusted the strap of her goggles. "So now I've got a question for you: did you ever figure out what cooking has to do with alchemy while you were learning with Cal?"

Edward shook his head, not looking up from his work. It wasn't his project, but now that he was working on it, he was very focused. "He wouldn't tell us. Our teacher used to tell Al and I that cooking was like alchemy, too."

Renea smiled a little. "When you get it, you're going to kick yourself for not getting it sooner. You're either not thinking about it at all or you're overthinking it if you haven't gotten it yet." She sighed. "Cal never could have learned alchemy if he hadn't been a cooking prodigy, you know. His mind didn't work like most people's. He could barely read and write, through no fault of his own. His teacher had to have been something else, to make him into as good an alchemist as he was."

Edward thought back to Hart's illegible notes, and how few of them he'd seemed to keep. What he did have were written more like recipes, now that he thought about it, although he hadn't been able to read a good deal of it. He found it easy to believe that Hart's mind wasn't wired normally, especially by his demeanor when he wasn't in the kitchen.

"I know why cooking is like alchemy," Alphonse announced.

Edward looked over at him. "Oh? Then tell me so I don't feel like I wasted my time."

"No, you have to figure it out for yourself," Renea said before Alphonse could respond. "Even if your alchemical career doesn't hinge around you realizing how cooking is like alchemy, Cal would have wanted you to figure it out. But if you want, I can have your brother tell me what he thinks it is later, so if he's right he can tell you whether you have it or not later on."

Edward muttered something unpleasant. Renea laughed a little. "That's alchemy, kid: problem solving. You'll be better for it once you get it."


	7. Pieces

**Chapter Seven: Pieces**

Edward looked at the back of the picture, where he'd added what he could remember of Renea's tattoo to the partial array already drawn there. He had done it in pencil so he could erase it if it was wrong, but he was surprised to realize that even with two parts, he still couldn't figure out what the array was supposed to be when completed. Had he copied Renea's part wrong?

"I wish I could see her tattoo again," Edward sighed, putting the picture back into the cookbook and putting the cookbook back into his suitcase. "That transmutation circle doesn't make any sense so far. I had to have copied part of it wrong."

"I don't think she'll show you again," Alphonse told him. He was sitting on the futon in front of the bed again, reading a book he had taken off the shelf in Renea's laboratory (with her permission).

Edward closed the lid of his suitcase a little harder than necessary, but didn't latch it closed. "Don't you think I know that?" he growled. He sighed and climbed back up onto the bed. "She's got to know I saw it and I'm going to ask about it, though. I mean, I know a lot of alchemists who tattoo arrays they use often on their bodies, but incomplete transmutation circles?"

Alphonse nodded, although it was more a movement of his entire upper body than it was the helmet of the armor. "But maybe she'll have an excuse. Like she lost her nerve when it wasn't finished or something like that."

Edward sighed. "Maybe it would be easier if I just tell her what Hart told me and show her the picture for proof. She seems to miss him a lot, and it _was_ sort of the last thing he said."

Alphonse looked at the door, then got up, plates of his armor clanking and scraping together as he did so. He went over to the door and opened it, looking down at Silas, who had his ear pressed to the door. Silas looked back up at him and smiled nervously.

"Can we help you?" Alphonse asked.

Silas seemed to seriously consider this question (or, possibly, what excuse he should give for eavesdropping). Finally, he nodded and looked around, making sure no one else was around to listen in. "Can I come in?"

Alphonse stood aside, letting Silas come in. Edward sighed. He was really not in the mood to deal with the rude little boy at the moment. Alphonse closed the door behind him and walked back over to the futon. Silas went and sat on the opposite side of the bed from where Edward was sitting.

"I heard you guys talking about my Mom's tattoo," Silas said, once he was settled in with the older alchemists. "I've got that thing memorized. If you want to know what it looks like, I can draw it for you."

Edward looked surprised. Of course, it made sense, though: Renea saw her children every day, and Silas was known for spying on her. It would make less sense if her children hadn't gotten a good look at it. "Really? You'd do that?" he asked.

Silas nodded. "But you've gotta do something for me first," he said, a malicious grin appearing on his face.

Edward sighed. He should have known that Silas wouldn't just volunteer the information if there wasn't a catch. "All right. What is it you want?"

Silas laid down on his stomach and glanced up at Edward. "Tell me how you became a State Alchemist. I heard you tell Mom you got your certfication when you were only twelve. That means I could get mine in four years. I want to know how you did it."

Edward opened his mouth to answer, but Alphonse interrupted him. "You want to be a State Alchemist? Even after your mother resigned as one? Even though she dislikes the military?"

Silas looked down at Alphonse and nodded. "Yeah. I want to fix all the stuff that made Mom quit. I want to make a lot of money so she doesn't have to keep trying to teach alchemy to stupid kids, and then she can come back and make even more money. She hates teaching, you know." Silas turned onto his back and stared up at the beams supporting the cielng. "I want to make a lot of money for Mom, but I want to use alchemy to do it. Being a State Alchemist would make me the most money."

Alphonse had turned himself around on the futon so he could look at the top of the bed. His glowing eyes stared down at him. "Silas, alchemy is supposed to be used for helping people, not for money. That's greedy, and wrong."

Silas shrugged. "It would be to help Mom. She's a person. So tell me, how'd you become a State Alchemist?" He nudged Edward.

Edward flinched. "You know that State Alchemists aren't just paid to use alchemy, right? They're soldiers. The military tells them how to use their alchemy. They could even order them to kill a person, or go to war. Yeah, they get a lot of money, but if they don't show results for the military's money, they could lose their certification."

"I know," Silas snapped. "That's why my Uncle Cyrus ran away. They were going to take away his certfication. I still think all of that is worth it if I can help Mom. Maybe I can help other people, too. Why do you do it if it's so horrible?"

"I have my reasons," Edward muttered. "Let's just say there's something important I need to do, and I don't have many options." He turned and looked down at Silas as well, sighing. "The military doesn't accept twelve year olds as a rule. I'm the exception. And you don't get to be an exception unless you can at least do this." He looked around the room, then kicked open his suitcase and pulled out a hairbrush, which he placed on the nightstand. Then he clapped his hands together and put them on either side of the hairbrush. There was the light of a transmutation reaction, and Edward picked up a small wooden horse,which had a bristley mane and tail, and offered it to Silas, who had sat up for the demonstration and looked amazed.

"You don't use a circle?!" Silas cried, as Edward took the horse back and returned it to its more useful former state as a hairbrush. "Mom can't even do that! That's so cool! How did you do that?!"

"That's a secret," Edward said, as he dropped the hairbrush back into the open suitcase and closed the top of it again. "But if you can't do that, there's no way the military will accept you when you're twelve." All right, so this wasn't entirely true: Edward and Alphonse had both received notice of being allowed to take the exam, and Edward had had no idea he could perform arrayless alchemy until mere months before the exam, meaning that his being allowed to try to receive his certification had nothing to do with his being able to use alchemy without a transmutation circle. But he was sure it had played a part in his getting his certification, and even if that wasn't so, Silas certainly didn't need to know that.

Silas pouted, and Edward sighed. "Look, no one wants to join the military that young. Trust me. Hell, I don't want to be in the military at all. Grow up some, and maybe you'll find something better to do with your alchemy after you've learned a bit more."

Silas just grunted and climbed off the bed, heading toward the door. Edward stood up off of the bed, realizing he inteded to leave. "Hey! You said you'd show me what your mother's tattoo has on it!"

Silas rolled his eyes, then walked up to the nightstand, where Edward had left his pencil. Edward reached into his suitcase and yanked out a scrap of paper, which Silas scribbled on. He thrusted both the paper and the pencil into Edward's hand. "Here. Even though you didn't really tell me what I wanted to know." Then he left the room, shutting the door a little harder than was necessary as he did so.

Edward glanced down at the paper in his hand. It was, indeed, what he had seen on Renea's tattoo, a bit crudely reproduced, but still clear enough that Edward could copy it onto the array. He took the cookbook out of the suitcase and leafed through it, then found the page where he had hidden the picture. He flipped the photograph over and made the corrections to what he had tried to add to it by memory.

"It still doesn't make any sense," Edward said, after a few moments of examining it. "I should be able to at least tell a part of what it's supposed to be for with this much." He put both the paper and the picture back into the book, then put it back into the suitcase.

"Maybe it won't unless you have the other two parts," Alphonse suggested. "Or maybe it never will. Hart never said the project was successful."

"Then why would they all get parts of an array tattooed on them if it doesn't do anything?" Edward pointed out. "And why would Hart tell me to get all the parts, or have Cyrus give them to me?"

Edward reached over to the lamp, pausing in turning it off. "Are you going to keep reading tonight?"

"Probably," Alphonse said, holding up the book. He wasn't that far in, but as he didn't sleep, he would probably be finished by morning.

"All right. Good night, then," Edward said, laying down stretching out as much as he could on the bed (which wasn't much) and falling into an uneasy sleep.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Alphonse was attempting to cook again when Edward decided to approach Renea on the subject of the project. She seemed relaxed enough, sitting on the counter and idly chewing on a piece of celery she'd taken from the pile Alphonse had been preparing to chop up. She hadn't put the bandage over her scar again, and Edward could only assume it was because she saw no point in doing so now that everyone had seen it. (Alphonse had asked her how she'd gotten it earlier that day, and only received a vague answer involving the war and shrapnel.)

Really, it was the ideal time. Both of the boys were in school, and Celia was laying down for her afternoon nap (after complaining about having to leave Edward, until he finally agreed to take her upstairs and get her tucked in), which meant there was no one around that would overhear them. It was times like this that Renea seemed to be at least willing to begin to broach her "forbidden" topics.

"Miss Renea?" Edward asked. He hopped up on the counter next to her (apparently she didn't like to be on her feet often, although she wouldn't tell him why, and having no chairs in the kitchen meant the counter had to be used as a seat).

Renea finished her celery, wiping her hand on her coat. "Yeah?"

Edward bit his lip. Her mood was volatile at best. It would be a shame to make her angry when she was in such a seemingly good mood. But he also knew he couldn't spend much longer in Cervante, especially with the military not knowing where he was and not having a way to contact him if he was needed for an assignment. He needed information, and he needed it soon.

"When I was with Hart that last night, he talked about a project you and him worked on, with your brother and a man named Ferris Keyes. He said that what you were working on could help Al and I with our own mission," Edward started. He stopped to guage her reaction, surprised to see that her expression was completely nuetral so far. He was certain this had to be the calm before the storm. "He said that I was supposed to bother you into telling me where Cyrus is, and not believe you when you said you didn't know where he is, but I thought it would be better to ask you instead, because you don't want to say where he is."

Renea sat still on the counter for a long time, giving no sign of reacting to what Edward had just said. Finally, she slid off of it and began to head toward the door. "I see," she said softly. "This entire time you were here, helping me, getting to know me and my children...you were just trying to find out things about illegal research for your own personal gain." She pushed open the door. "Get out of my house. Now."

Edward blinked, surprised. She sounded very calm, but under it she seemed...hurt? Betrayed? But more importantly, if he didn't think of something to say, she not only wasn't going to give him any information, he wouldn't know where Cyrus was to ask him, either.

So he blurted out the only thing he could think of: "Celia isn't your daughter, is she?"

That seemed to work: Renea let the door close again, then rounded her gaze back onto Edward, who slid off of the counter slowly under the weight of it. It had been an idle theory, and one he never really meant to discuss with her, and now that it was out he immediately regretted saying it.

"How _dare_ you?" Renea practically growled. "Is this how the military trains you?! To try to earn people's trust so you can con information out of them, then blackmail them if you can't?! Or is that something unique to you?!"

Edward looked slightly taken aback. He certainly hadn't meant to imply that he would tell anyone if she didn't tell him what he wanted to know. All the more reason bringing it up at all was a mistake. "That's not it! I don't plan to tell anyone! I just wanted to get you to listen to me!" he cried defensively.

"Brother, we should go..." Alphonse suggested. He'd turned off the stove and oven, and was currently trying to herd Edward toward the door, but Edward refused to budge.

"I was telling the truth! We're not here for the military!" Edward continued. "They don't know we're here! I just...I need to know some things. You keep talking about your family...Al's my family, and I did something very wrong to hurt him. Your project may be a way to make that up to him. Do you understand?"

Renea crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the floor. Edward could hear Alphonse flinch and back away at his words, and he probably would have objected to what he had said, had Renea not started to speak. "I don't think _you_ understand," she accused. "Understand what talking about the project will cause. Understand what your accusation means. Understand what pursuing this matter means. I put it behind me for a reason: because it didn't work, and it wasn't worth risking my career- or my _life_- over. It was Ferris's project, anyway. I wanted nothing to do with it. I only got involved because Cyrus and Cal did. Cyrus doesn't think anything through, and Cal would listen to anyone with the slightest bit of authority over him. If I weren't there, Ferris probably would have gotten them both killed."

"But you're not in the military anymore," Edward pointed out. "And I don't intend to tell them anything. The only reason I joined at all was to help my brother. If I can help Al, I'll quit, too. I have no real allegience to the military."

Renea snorted. "In this country, there's no way of getting out of the military entirely. As long as I don't say anything, my family and I are safe." She pushed open the door again, but this time she looked out at the dining room for a moment, then closed it. "And I am still not very happy about you bringing my daughter into this. Where the hell did that come from?"

Edward sighed, looking down at the floor as well. "I don't know. Talking to her the other night...she has the same eye color as your brother."

"So what?" Renea asked. "He's my brother. We're family. Mystery solved. Maybe someday you'll have a kid who looks like your brother. Are you going to assume your wife was cuckolding you with him?"

Alphonse made an interesting sound, somewhere between a gasp and a choke, and Edward shook his head. "No, it's just that...when did your husband die?"

"Five years ago," Renea said quickly, without having to think about it.

Edward nodded. "And how old is Celia?"

"About four and a half. I was pregnant when Dennis died. It happens," Renea supplied. She looked up, and her look dared Edward to counter that logic. She then sighed, looking at the door again. "Who am I kidding? The people in town didn't see much of me then and wouldn't have noticed if I was pregnant or not, but the boys were old enough that they would have been able to remember if I was or not. It's only a matter of time before Silas starts asking about it, and then Celia probably will, too, because that boy can't keep his mouth shut."

"So she isn't yours?" Alphonse asked, clearly surprised that Edward's theory had been correct despite the evidence to the contrary.

She shook her head. "It was fairly soon after Dennis died, maybe five months after, and I was still in mourning. Cut my hair, wore black, and rarely socialized, that whole thing. Anyway, Cyrus randomly showed up with a newborn baby and told me that she was his, but he couldn't take care of her and he didn't trust anyone else to, and asked me to. I wanted to say no and yell at him for once again doing stupid things without thinking ahead, but instead I agreed to raise her as mine. He's come and visited a few times, never for a whole day because he doesn't want to get us in trouble, but he likes to see Celia and the kids love their Uncle Cyrus. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't know any more about what happened to him than you do."

Renea stepped up to the counter where Alphonse had been chopping vegetables, examining them. "Look, I can't talk about the project. I probably couldn't remember a lot of key details even if I tried at this point. I've really made an effort to put it all behind me. I'm sorry that I couldn't help you more. You really should leave if that's all you needed to know." She then turned and left the kitchen.

Edward sighed and left as well, Alphonse close behind. He came out into the dining room just in time to see Renea disappear into the laboratory, and hear the clicking of the lock engaging once she was inside. Sulking, he trudged up the stairs and into Celia's room to pack his things, feeling immensely disappointed. So much for that lead...

"At least she doesn't seem to hate us, Brother," Alphonse pointed out. "Maybe we can come back and see her later. Not about this, but just to see her and the kids."

Edward shrugged. "Whatever," he muttered, buckling the clasps on his suitcase. He heaved it onto the bed, then began to pull on his red duster. The truth was he _would_ like to come back and see her when he wasn't so preoccupied with his goal, but after the conversation that had taken place, he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to face her again.

The door opened without anyone knocking, and Edward turned around, expecting to see Celia there. Instead, Renea was standing there, still wearing her work gloves. She crossed her arms and leaned in the doorframe. "Thare," she said at last. "Last time I spoke to Cyrus, he told me he was living in Thare. He didn't get any more specific than that, and I didn't ask. I didn't even want to know that much, because of all the harrassment I get from the military, but he insisted that I know where he is in case Celia needs him. It was the most forethought he'd ever put into anything in his life, so I let him tell me."

Edward grabbed his suitcase. "Why are you telling us this? I thought you didn't tell anyone where your brother was."

Renea shrugged. "Because you need to help your brother. Because Cal wanted it. Because I'm out of my damn mind. All I know is Cyrus was more involved in the project than I was, and is probably more willing to talk about it. I can't make and guarantees, though."

Alphonse stepped up to Renea, bowing slightly. "Thank you, Miss Renea."

Renea waved her hand. "Don't thank me. Just leave before Celia wakes up and attaches herself to your brother's leg so he can never leave."


	8. Thare

**Chapter Eight: Thare**

Edward had to admit that he wasn't sure he wanted to go to Thare, even if it was to follow what may be a valuable lead. He'd never heard of what happened to State Alchemists if the military found out they were visiting the lawless town without authorization, and he really wasn't keen on being the example. But considering the military didn't even know he had been in Cervante, he felt fairly confident that he wouldn't be found en route to Thare.

This is what he told himself as he began his third day of walking in the woods toward the town, following the overgrown train tracks of what had once been a railway leading to Thare. The rumors were at least right in one regard: he had started at South City's southeast corner and walked straight from there, and the train tracks had been his guide the rest of the way.

"Are you tried, Brother?" Alphonse asked. They had been moving pretty much non-stop since they had arrived in South City, with Alphonse carrying Edward when he needed to rest. He usually didn't feel comfortable with this sort of arrangement, but he had believed if they kept moving, they could shave time off of their trip. So far, they didn't seem to be faring much better than many other visitors who dared to hike to the "forbidden town".

"Not really. Besides, we should be almost there," Edward replied optimistically. He had left his suitcase in a locker in Southern Headquarters, planning to rent a locker elsewhere if there were too many questions involved in that plan, but one flash of his watch and the woman working in storage hadn't even asked for his name. She'd just handed him a key and given him a number where he could store his suitcase. At the moment, he was wishing he had it with him. Or at least a few choice items he kept in it, namely those that were used for personal hygeine and automail and armor maintainence.

Edward very nearly literally stumbled onto the town. Or into it. Surrounded by trees on all sides (a factor in the criminals taking it over: it was very hard to see or get to, so the military had difficulty monitoring it), the tree line abruptly ended, spilling out into the town. The buildings were decrepit, the windows boarded up, and the roads were in serious disrepair, all things that were to be expected. What Edward didn't expect were the sheer number of people: women (and a few men) standing in front of every building and on every street corner in various states of undress, men gathered in small groups playing games, children darting in and out of alleyways and brushing up against the people only to be chased down the street, and more people coming in and out of the buildings, walking the streets with their hands firmly in their pockets or weapons in clear view, walking up to examine the women like they were goods (and Edward got the distinct feeling they were here), fighting each other viciously with no one to stop them...no matter how bad Edward had imagined Thare would be, this was worse than he could have ever imagined.

"Brother, there's so many people..." Alphonse said in awe. "How will we ever find Cyrus?"

Edward shrugged, hesitated for a moment, then started to walk. "I don't know. I guess we have to ask someone," he said. He turned around and saw that Alphonse wasn't following him yet. "Are you coming?"

Alphonse really didn't seem like he would be for a few moments, but then he slowly stepped toward Edward. His pace increased, and Edward was able to walk at his normal speed without having to worry about losing his little brother. Which suited him just fine: he felt nervous and horribly out of place in this town. He knew how to defend himself, certainly, and Renea had said that alchemy was respected here, but he didn't know how he'd fare against several people trying to harm him at once and in different ways.

The nearest building that seemed more or less open had a broken wooden sign that read BAR. There was graffiti all over the boarded up windows, and the broken part of the sign had probably once been the name of this place, but the front door was open (or rather, it was gone entirely), and there seemed to be people actually using it as a bar inside.

As he was about to step inside, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and wheeled around to face a skinny woman with small breasts. He could tell just how small from the fact that what she was wearing barely constituted a covering, and in more civilized towns she would have been arrested for public indecency.

"Looking for some fun, little guy?" she asked him in what she must have believed to be a seductive voice.

Instead, Edward felt his rage boiling inside of him. "Who are you calling so small if you looked directly at a crowd you'd look right over his head and miss him?!" he shrieked at her, causing her to take a step back and blink.

Edward was suddenly launched sideways as a fist met his cheek, sending him tumbling to the broken sidewalk. He looked up at a very tall man, who was wearing sunglasses and had disgusting teeth. The man had stepped in front of the woman, having seemingly materialized from no where, just to punch Edward in the face.

"Brother!" Alphonse cried, running to Edward's side, but before he could get there the man was already there. He kicked him hard in the ribs.

"I saw you abusing my girl!" he accused, kicking Edward again.

Edward managed to scramble to his feet. "I wasn't abusing her! I just yelled at her a little!" he cried defensively.

Edward found himself answered by a punch in the mouth, which sent him back onto the ground. The man stood back and looked down at him, the warning as evident in his eyes as it was in his voice. "You want to abuse my girls, you gotta pay. Got it?" He then turned and walked away, the whore latching on to his arm and following him as he did so.

Alphonse ran over to Edward and crouched down to help him to his feet. Edward spat out the blood he tasted in his mouth. He could already feel his cheek swelling, but fortunately his ribs didn't feel broken. He wasn't sure if there were even medical professionals in this town, and he didn't relish having to walk for three days to find one.

"Are you all right, Brother?" Alphonse asked gently. He was trying to brush some dust off of his brother's clothing.

Edward sighed. "Yeah, I'll be fine as long as I don't talk to anyone, I guess." He jumped as he suddenly felt a pinch on his rear, and he whirled around, ready to ask Alphonse what he'd done that for. Instead he saw Alphonse standing a little to the side, and a dirty, overweight man looking at him appraisingly.

"Fifty sens for the hour," he offered, looking like he was going to start drooling at any moment. He rather reminded Edward of Gluttony.

"What? Hey!" Edward cried, shielding his rear and leaping backward.

The man sighed. "All right, one hundred sens for the hour, but if you think you're worth more than that, you're fooling yourself," he told him, grabbing Edward's right arm and trying to drag him away.

"What do you mean I'm...I'm not for sale!" Edward shrieked, pulling out of his grasp, his train of thought changing mid-sentence.

The man backed away, then walked toward where a group of boys wearing very little gathered. Edward shuddered at what had just happened. "Let's get inside, find Cyrus, and get the hell away from here," he told Alphonse.

Alphonse seemed to heartily agree with this plan as he followed Edward into the bar without hesitation. A few of the patrons glanced up from their drinks and games, but most of the people in the bar didn't seem to notice the new arrivals at all, and those that did quickly returned to minding their own business. Well, as long as no one was trying to buy him, Edward didn't care if they treated him like he was invisible.

Edward and Alphonse made their way up to the bar, where the bartender was trying to wipe a glass. This was proving quite difficult, as the rag he was using was quite filthy in its own right and was leaving greasy smears on the glass. Edward now dreaded the prospect of having to eat and drink in this town.

"You boys aren't from around here," the bartender said plainly, not looking up from his attempt to get the glass clean.

"No, we're not," Alphonse said, surprised. "How did you know?"

The bartender looked up from the glass and examined Alphonse for a moment. "You've got the right idea, kid, but you don't have to go quite that far to protect yourself. But you sound kinda young, so I guess that's why."

It took Edward a moment to realize he was talking about the fact that Alphonse was "wearing"a suit of armor. Annoyed, he decided to get right down to the reason why they were there. "We're actually here looking for someone," he confessed.

The bartender snorted. "Thare's not the kind of place people come to when they want to be found."

Edward leaned forward on the bar. "This guy would probably be kind of well-known, though. He's an alchemist." The conversations in the bar ceased, and the people finally started to pay attention to the new arrivals. Edward remembered what Renea had said about the people of Thare being afraid of alchemists, and decided to take a chance. "He's an alchemist like us," he said loudly, so everyone in the bar could hear. Sure enough, whispers began to spread around the bar. A few people even left, presumably to get word out to the general population.

The bartender put the glass down and leaned on the bar, speaking in a low voice. "You'd better be able to back that claim up, little boy," he said warningly. Before Edward could comment, he continued to speak. "If you want to find an alchemist in Thare, you gotta talk to Old Murph. He lives over on the west side of town in the red house. The one with the glass in the upstairs window."

"Is he an alchemist?" Alphonse asked in an equally low voice.

The bartender shook his head. "No, but he's the last honest man in this town, and he's got a young fellow who claims he's an alchemist working for him. I ain't ever seen him do alchemy with my own two eyes, but I've seen him causing trouble like a local. But I've heard folks tell stories about him using alchemy with that earring of his."

Edward and Alphonse looked at each other, then quickly got off their stools, heading toward the exit of the bar. "Thanks, mister!" Alphonse called out.

"Just keep your hands in your pockets and your eyes peeled!" the bartender shouted back.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Old Murph"'s house was exactly as the bartender had described it: a small red house on the far west side of the town. Edward was panting as he approached it, noticing glass in the single upstairs window, although the lower ones were boarded up like the rest of the windows in this town. He had a feeling glass didn't survive long in a town like this, and thus having any at all was something unusual.

Really, other than the boards covering the downstairs windows, the house looked to be in very good shape for being in Thare, and even then the boards had been fitted to look something like shutters at a distance. The red paint seemed to have been reapplied recently, the steps were solid and sturdy, and the roof looked like it didn't need to be patched or repaired for a good, long time. Had Cyrus fixed up Old Murph's home for him, or had Old Murph done it himself?

Edward was a bit hesitant to knock. The locals weren't exactly friendly when he'd found them out in a public place. What would someone say about him trying to visit them in their home, probably their only sanctuary from the depravity surrounding them? But finding Cyrus Walker was his only reason for making the trip to this place, and he was determined to find the man. So he did knock. And knocked again. And knocked again.

Edward knocked for a full fifteen minutes, and even shouted at the door a few times, despite Alphonse's insistance that no one was home and he was being rude. At last, the door opened, and Edward smiled smugly at his brother...until he noticed the person on the other side was decidedly _not_ happy.

"What the hell do you want that's worth you making a racket to wake the dead?!" the old man snapped. Edward could only guess he was Old Murph, as he matched the name pretty well: he was a very old man, hunched over and shaking, with what was left of his white hair wild and his dark eyes squinting and unfocused.

Edward backed up, nearly falling down the steps leading up to the house. "W-we were told to come and see you. About an alchemist that works for you."

"No," Old Murph said, starting to close the door.

Edward wedged his right hand into it. "What do you mean 'no'?"

Old Murph opened the door a few more times and slammed it on his hand, getting annoyed by the fact that this didn't seem to cause the boy any pain. "I said no, I'm not telling you shit. Now get the hell away before I go and get my gun."

Edward removed his hand and opened his mouth to protest when he noticed something running from the back of the house. That something seemed suspiciously shaped like a person with copper red hair. "Al, over there!" Edward cried. He broke out into a dead run, following the figure through the woods, Alphonse close behind.

The figure didn't get far. He stumbled over, and Edward could see he was a man with dirty, ripped clothing, messy red hair that brushed his shoulders, and stubble on his face. He lifted his right leg, cursed it, then, much to Edward's surprise, removed it and threw it at him and Alphonse, where it landed in the path and kicked up dust.

Edward could see his nervous amber eyes under his messy bangs, and just barely see the earring dangling from his right ear. There was no doubting this was Cyrus Walker. And Cyrus was now staring at the shoddy wooden leg he had just heaved at the brothers.

"Um....I'm gonna need that back," Cyrus finally declared, holding his hand out expectantly. Alphonse picked it up and threw it underhanded toward him, and he caught it. "Thanks. This damn thing's useless, but what can I do?" He began to fasten it back on, then stood up shakily, taking a few wobbling steps until he was finally able to walk normally, if with a slight limp. Edward was impressed he'd managed to run that far on it.

Cyrus nodded at the Elric brothers...then took off running again. Edward sighed, and didn't try so hard to follow him into the woods this time. Sure enough, he saw Cyrus on the ground no more than twenty meters away from where he'd taken off running. He had his hands cupped around his earring, and a wall of roots rose up to block Edward from approaching him. Edward swore, then clapped his hands and put them on the roots, transmuting them into a door that he threw open. Cyrus hadn't even made it two meters this time.

Cyrus pulled himself up to his feet again, then sighed and held his arms out, hands in fists but pressed together, as if expecting them to be cuffed together. "All right. You got me. Cuff me. Take me away."

Edward quirked and eyebrow. He wasn't sure what he'd expected when he met Cyrus Walker, but this certainly wasn't on the list of things he could have expected. He took the time to examine him a bit closer now: he was thin. Almost scarily so. His amber eyes were still bright with mischief, despite his apparent surrender, but everything else about him was dull. His pale skin was smuged with dirt, his baggy tan shirt was ripped and covered with equal parts dirt and grass stains, and his brown pants were tied on with a bit of cord, a hole over the right leg revealing the wooden prosthetic for all who cared to look. He was wearing brown shoes, but the one on his right foot had a hole cut out of the front so that the foot of the prosthetic could fit in it.

"Why do you think we want to arrest you?" Edward asked, his appraisal of the man over.

Cyrus looked confused for a moment, then dropped one of his arms to his side and used the other to point at the chain dangling from Ed's pocket. "You're a State Alchemist, aren't you? The military's been after me for years, and no one in the military is allowed here unless they're assigned here, so that must mean you came to get me...right?"

Edward looked down at the chain of his pocket watch, suddenly embarrassed that he hadn't hid it better. He was surprised no one had tried to take it, really. "The military doesn't know we're here. We just wanted to come and talk to you. Your sister told us where we could find you."

"My sister?" Cyrus cocked an eyebrow, then suddenly threw himself to the ground, arranging himself into a sitting position. "Renea said she'd never talk. Huh. What the hell would you want to talk to me about that she would send you all the way to Thare to find me?"

Cyrus suddenly looked up at Edward, then offered his right hand from where he was sitting. He looked at it, laughed nervously, then wiped it on his shirt before offering it again. Edward was still disinclined to touch it, wearing gloves or no, but he shook his hand anyway. "I think you know I'm Cyrus Walker. Formerly Major. Now AWOL. And you?"

Edward took his hand back. "Edward Elric," he said by way of invitation. He pointed behind him with his thumb. "This is my younger brother, Alphonse."

Cyrus looked at Alphonse for a moment, and Edward waited for the inevitible comment regarding their size versus their ages, but instead the man shrugged and picked up a stick. "Okay. So you braved coming to Thare."

"Brave is right! I got attacked by some guy who thought I was being violent with his girl, and then some guy tried to buy me!" Edward yelled, when Cyrus didn't add anything to his statement.

Cyrus laughed a little. "I have no doubt someone did. Children who wear red in Thare are for sale. You look like a kid who's a little past his prime, but a kid none the less."

Edward snorted, then threw himself down next to where Cyrus was sitting. Alphonse awkwardly seated himself on the ground next to his brother, staring at Cyrus. "Your sister believed that we didn't want to get you in trouble," he said before Edward could comment on his being a "kid a little past his prime".

Cyrus jumped a little upon hearing Alphonse speak. "Damn, you _are_ just a little kid in there, aren't you?! How're you filling it out?!"

Edward growled and changed the subject. "We came here because of something Calvinia Hart said to me before he died."

Cyrus, who had reached over to remove Alphonse's helmet (with Alphonse doing his best to keep away from him), suddenly fell back into his seated position, the look of shock and sadness on his face making his sister's reaction look downright unsympathetic. He stared at Edward for a long time, as if waiting for him to say something more, then spoke again. "Cal's dead?" he asked softly.

Edward suddenly remembered what Renea had said about Cyrus being close to Hart. That alone could work to his advantage, although when he remembered how Renea had acted when she'd believed she was being played with and used, he felt guilty about that thought. Both Hart and Renea had promised Edward that Cyrus would talk, and there would be no need to use his own grieving against him.

"H-how did it happen?" Cyrus asked at last, his voice quivering.

Edward sighed. With Renea it had been almost easy to tell her the story: he'd told it so many times it was automatic, and while her reaction was a little more emotional than anyone else's had been, she had bounced back pretty fast. But this man had been closer to Hart, and he seemed utterly devestated by the news. As such, Edward didn't think he could be quite so blunt with him.

Fortunately, he didn't have to be. "He took his own life," Alphonse told him gently. "I'm sorry. There was nothing Brother or I could do to stop it. We didn't know what he was doing until it was too late."

Cyrus swallowed and wiped his eye. "Guess I should have seen that coming. I wasn't around anymore, and I don't know where Ferris is or what the hell he's doing these days, but I'm sure he was no where around when Cal needed him." He sniffed. "Wonder if it would have made a difference if he knew that Eleanora and Keyes were still alive."

Edward leaned forward, looking for any indication that the statement wasn't true. "What do you mean, they're still alive?"

Cyrus looked at Edward, surprised. "You seem to know Cal pretty well. I figured the military would have let you in on that little tidbit of information." He sighed, his shoulders heaving as he did so. "Eleanora was a rotten shrew of a woman, but try getting Cal to believe that. To him, the sun didn't shine until she told it to. I never met the woman, but what I heard about her from Cal himself- the dressed up version of the things she did- made me dislike her. She left him while he was away at war and took Keyes with her. The military told Cal that she was dead so he wouldn't retire to look for her. Since we all thought she was bad for him, anyway, Ferris convinced Sis and I not to say anything. That he'd be better off believing that than thinking Eleanora didn't love him anymore."

"But what about his daughter?!" Alphonse cried out, suddenly outraged. "What does she think about him?!"

Cyrus shrugged. "If Eleanora has any decency in her, she told her he died. But she probably told her that he left them. Like I said, Eleanora's a shrew. Just an attractive one, and I got the idea that Cal wasn't particularly used to getting affection, especially from women. He married her pretty soon after he met her."

It was Edward's turn to sigh. He didn't want to say what he was thinking: that Cyrus had wanted to see Hart unattached. He had admitted that he had never met Eleanora, and yet he spoke of her like he knew her inside and out. "Hart was giving me cooking lessons." He waited for Cyrus to finish laughing, his eyes narrowing as he did so, before continuing. "Before he died, he told me to find your sister and ask her where to find you."

Cyrus was quiet, apparently giving this some consideration. "Anything in particular you were supposed to tell me?" he asked.

Edward shook his head. "No. We were supposed to ask you about a project you, him, Ferris Keyes, and your sister all worked on in the war. It may help us with what we're after."

Cyrus clearly looked disappointed. He slowly climbed back to his feet after a few moments. "Come on. You two have to be hungry after that trip. Old Murph won't miss me for just one night."

Cyrus started to walk back in the direction of the town, and Edward scrambled to his feet, rushing to his side. He could hear Alphonse doing the same behind him, but didn't have enough time to go back and help him. "What about the project?"

"Plenty of time to talk about that later. I'm hungry and a little depressed right now. I could use a little food and a little comfort of the liquid variety," he told Edward.

Edward nodded. "But you're going to talk to us about it, right?"

Cyrus shrugged. "If you're into hopelessly failed projects, sure, I can talk about it a little later. You made the effort of coming to find me, something no one else in the military has ever succeeded in, after all."

After that, Edward and Alphonse followed him into town in silence.


	9. Rogue

**Chapter Nine: Rogue**

They all found themselves in a bar, this one darker than the last (mostly because it actually had a door). Cyrus took a seat at a table, and Edward and Alphonse seated themselves at the same table without having to be invited to. Cyrus signalled for someone, shrugged when no one paid attention, then slumped over the table.

"Mr. Walker?" Alphonse asked.

Cyrus laughed without lifting his head. "It's just Cyrus, kid, but I appreciate the sentiment. I haven't done anything to earn that kind of respect, though."

Alphonse shifted in his seat, his armor creaking as he did so. "All right, Mr....um...Cyrus. How come you don't have automail?"

Cyrus snorted and tapped the front of his right foot on the table leg, making the sound of hollow wood on wood. "Can't afford it. Even if I could, there's no automail mechanics anywhere near Thare, and being wanted kind of makes it hard to go to where there is one."

Edward began to drum the fingers of his right hand on the table, suddenly feeling fortunate. Well, compared to someone like Cyrus, who had no money and burnt all of his bridges. "How'd you lose your leg, anyway?'

Cyrus looked up long enough to flash a smile, then laid his head down sideways so that he could watch the rest of the bar. "I'd like to say I lost it in the war or doing something fantastically heroic, but alas, I can't. I made some bad financial decisions involving a man named Clem the Ax, and found out the hard way why he's called 'the Ax'. Needless to say, my money managing habits have improved greatly since that day, what with me valuing my remaining extremeties and all."

Edward stopped drumming his fingers, again looking at Cyrus for any indication that he was lying, but his face seemed to suggest he was telling the absolute truth. He shuddered, suddenly getting a vivid mental image of Cyrus being held down while a large man stood over him with an ax...he looked over at Alphonse, and even without facial expressions to tell him his emotions, Edward could tell he'd had the same image come to his mind.

Really, Edward couldn't tell if he liked Cyrus or not. After all, he didn't really know him yet. But he did know that he felt somewhat sorry for the man. True, most of the hardships in his life were the direct result of his own stupidity, but he seemed to have a knack of getting punished much more severely than he deserved for his mistakes, something Edward could empathize with.

Cyrus sighed again, looking around the bar. "What the hell does it take to get some service here?" he muttered. He raised his hand and waved it, then suddenly seemed exhausted, laying his head on his folded arms again. Edward came to the uncomfortable realization that it wasn't exhaustion that was overtaking him; it was grief. With Edward and Alphonse there, Cyrus wasn't permitted the time he needed to grieve properly. However, there was no way Edward was going to risk losing Cyrus again after the effort it had taken to find him. He'd have plenty of time to grieve after he spoke to the brothers about the project.

"I tried to get him to quit, you know. Just before I ran off. It wasn't as sudden a decision as everyone thought," Cyrus randomly declared. "But Cal wouldn't hear of it. He wouldn't leave when Renea left, and he wouldn't leave when I left. He was still sticking to Ferris, who had long since disappeared."

"Ferris Keyes' file said that he was on an indefinate hold in Central Hospital's mental ward," Edward pointing out, sure that this would be news to Cyrus.

Instead, Cyrus laughed bitterly. "Do you really think the military is going to tell the truth about where he is?" he asked. "Ferris opened his mouth about our project during the war. I guess someone was onto him so he sold us all out. He got a nice lab position, but what he's doing is apparently not the kind of stuff that the military wants anyone to know about. And I was supposed to get into it as well. I got threatened into getting involved. So I ran instead. I tried to talk Cal into it, knowing he'd be next, knowing that as long as he was still a State Alchemist then the military could make him do anything. But he wouldn't budge. I guess I should have seen it coming."

"Why?" Alphonse asked. "If you knew the military wanted you to do bad things or punish you for not, how come Mr. Hart wouldn't believe you? I thought he was your friend."

Cyrus flinched noticably. "Cal was. The problem wasn't that Cal didn't believe me. It's that he was owned by the military. His mind doesn't work like most people's. He's brilliant with anything that requires combining and making things: alchemy, cooking, carpentry...if you could explain things in terms of if you combine them and add a little effort then you get a certain result, he'll understand it. But you can't just explain things to him and expect him to do it unless you have authority over him. He has trouble processing conversation, he can barely read or write...he seemed to grasp things better drunk than he did sober. He was hopelessly self-conscious as a result, and a lot of people pushed him around. He was the military's dream: an alchemist who has no goals or aspirations and just does what he's told when he's told to do it. His wife was aggressive, the military was aggressive, even his best friend was aggressive. And I wasn't. I couldn't bring myself to order him to do anything, and he couldn't make the choice on his own."

Edward couldn't help but feel sad and mildly disturbed at how Cyrus spoke of Hart in the present tense, like he believed he was still alive, or had forgotten he'd died. Alphonse began to run his fingers over something carved into the table top. "But he made the decision to end his own life..."

"That he did," Cyrus confirmed. "Unless it wasn't his decision. Unless he was ordered to. I have no trouble imagining it going either way myself: Cal knew his shortcomings very well. He knew it was impressive that he managed the way that he did, and he knew that he was going to spend his life being forced to do things that hurt people. I think he regret being in the military, but he would never admit it because Ferris was the one that got him in, and his world revolved around Ferris. I have no difficulty imagining this way of living, along with thinking his wife and daughter were dead, all conspiring to make him want to self-destruct. But it's easier for me to imagine that someone told him to take his own life. Not just because it makes me feel better to think someone indirectly killed him than he could have been driven to the breaking point himself, but because he would have done it in a heartbeat if the right person told him to."

"Cromwell had seen him earlier that day," Edward realized, suddenly filled with white-hot rage. "Cromwell, his sponsor. He went down into the basement alone with him and talked to him, although I don't know what about, and he blew up his lab, and threatened to courtmartial him if he didn't follow orders when he left. Then Hart built a bomb. He made me take it apart for him before he died."

"I know who Cromwell is," Cyrus said, his voice filling with deep hatred. "He's the only man that Ferris ever answered to, rank be damned. Ferris wasn't a model soldier, as you probably saw in his file. Cal never would have gotten involved in the military if it weren't for the efforts of those two."

Edward leaned on his own arm. "How did someone like him ever pass the exam, anyway? There's a written portion."

"Cromwell and Ferris pulled a few strings on the written, promising amazing results on the demonstration," Cyrus explained. "Cal turned in his test three and a half hours after time was called, as Ferris explained it. And what he turned in was barely readable. But his demonstration was, indeed, impressive, and he was willing to take orders without second guessing them. So I guess the whole written exam was overlooked with him."

So Hart was a _real_ dog of the military, not even treated like a human being. If Cyrus was telling the truth (and Edward had to admit that he had doubts), then Edward felt just as angry over his death as Renea and Cyrus did.

"Excuse me for a moment," Cyrus said, standing up. He headed toward the counter, leaving the brothers alone momentarily. Edward found himself suddenly feeling uncomfortable, as if having a local with him had afforded him some measure of protection that he hadn't had before, even though he was more than capable of protecting himself and his brother if the need arose.

Edward turned to face his brother...and realized that he wasn't there. Stunned, he leapt to his feet and began to survey the room. "Al!" he cried out, but he received no response. He climbed up on the chair and began to look around frantically. "Al!" he called again, and once again his cry was swallowed by the din of the crowd.

He finally saw the broad, metallic form of Alphonse in the corner, which was lit by the sparse light of a lamp. A group of people were gathered, and it was hard for Edward to see why from his vantage point. He finally realized what they were doing: they were playing cards. Edward jumped off the chair, then suddenly remembered what kind of place this was: people didn't just play cards here.

Edward approached the game just as the group of men stood up and hauled Alphonse to his feet. They threw him against the wall, two of them pinning his arms into place. Another man brandished a knife in front of him. "I said pay up, boy! You played your hand!"

"B-brother..." Alphonse said pitifully, looking in Edward's direction.

Edward sighed. "Al, you know they can't hurt you, right?"

"Yes," Alphonse confirmed. "But they said they'd hurt you."

Edward suddenly realized something. "And did they know I was your brother before I said anything?"

Alphonse shook his head. "No. That's why they have me like this."

The men released Alphonse and began to advance slowly on Edward. Suddenly, a foot came upside the man with the knife's head, causing him to drop his knife. This was especially strange, as the foot wasn't attached to a person.

"Little help?" Cyrus called, holding the bar for balance with one hand and holding out his hand to catch his leg with the other. Edward picked up the leg and tossed it to Cyrus, who put it back on. "Thanks."

Another of the men turned to look at Cyrus. "Cyrus Walker! It's been a while! I thought you'd decided you and your 'alchemy' were too good for us!" the man sneered at Cyrus. "Gonna sit in a hand or two and see if you can lose that other leg of yours?"

Cyrus shook his head and limped over to the group. "No, thank you. I've had quite enough cards for one lifetime," he said easily. He gestured with his thumb toward Edward. "Might wanna watch what you do with the little one, though. He and his brother are alchemists."

Edward opened his mouth to protest being called "little", but the men had begun to leer hungrilly at him. He suddenly wished he were just dealing with perverts now. At least he knew what they wanted from him...

"Alchemists? These kids?" the man who had been hit with the fake leg asked, climbing back to his feet. He leaned very close to Edward's face. "He don't look like no alchemist. He looks like about fifty sens an hour on Broad Street, if Tino don't gut him for getting on his turf first."

Edward was starting to wonder exactly what it was that made him seem so cheap, but once again, someone else spoke before he could. Or rather, he felt himself suddenly yanked forward as Cyrus tugged his watch by the chain out of his pocket. He held it up for the men, and Edward's beltloop stretched to keep from tearing as the chain was pulled.

"He's a State Alchemist," Cyrus explained, as if it needed to be explained, from the looks on the faces of the men. "So are you going to keep doubting him and his brother or are you going to treat them with respect and to a meal?"

The man who had just gotten up seized the watch, tugging Edward forward in the process. He _really_ wasn't enjoying being pulled around by a small strap of leather and loop of silver on his pants. The man leaned forward to look at the watch, then snorted and dropped it.

"He probably lifted it off a Statey in South City. There are boys making a pretty penny from the military up there," the man said casually. "Military don't come down here unless they don't plan to ever go back, right, Cyrus?"

Cyrus crossed his arms over his chest. "Why would anyone steal a State Alchemist watch? You can't do anything with it. You can't sell it, you can't give it away, and you can't keep it as a trophy, because if the military finds out you have it you'll get your ass kicked into a military jail faster than you can say 'alchemy'. It just so happens he's here looking for me."

Edward pocketed his watch. "Will you people let me talk?!" he shouted. The bar fell silent, and all eyes were on him. He suddenly realized he had nothing to say: Cyrus had pretty much said anything he could have, and more. Well, now that he had their attention, he had to do _something_. "Maybe you'll believe I'm an alchemist if I do this!" He clapped his hands and slapped them on the nearest tabletop. The transmutation reaction lit up the entire dark room for a moment, and drew many gasps and surprised stares. Finally, the light faded, and in the table's place was a small scale replica of Old Murph's house.

There was a long, tense moment of silence as everyone in the room seemed to process what they had just seen. Suddenly, the man who had doubted Edward's credentials in the first place pointed at the little house. "He did that without drawing one of those fancy patterns!" he exclaimed.

"Shit, the kid's the real deal!" someone else added, and the bar burst into a hum of conversation as people discussed this new development amongst themselves.

"Someone get them some food! On the house!" someone managed to shout over the crowd.

Edward noticed Cyrus cup his hand around his mouth to amplify the sound of his voice. "Yeah, and get something for the guy that came in with them!" He noticed Edward glaring at him and shrugged, mouthing "what?".

After that, things were mostly a blur as Edward, Alphonse, and Cyrus were once again seated to eat (or pretend to, in Alphonse's case).

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"This is the palace of Thare," Cyrus announced proudly, gesturing as if unveiling some majestic castle. The truth was the "palace" was a rickety old railroad station, and Edward didn't even want to take a guess at what the people on the platform were smoking, dropping on their tongues, injecting into themselves, or sniffing up. Frankly, Edward was just surprised that he hadn't seen many drugs in this place, but apparently they were all reserved for this part of town.

Really, Edward supposed he shouldn't be as surprised by how scarce drugs were here as he was. In places like Central, there were always alchemists who illegally transmuted them for money, and there was access to a wealth of raw materials or places that had things that couldn't be transmuted. In Thare, the town was isolated, which probably made drugs very rare indeed. Without an alchemist to transmute them, they would have to be made different ways, slower ways. And, Edward reflected, ways that probably required just as much knowledge of science as alchemy did.

"Why do you call it the palace?" Alphonse asked, as if he were willing to give the palatial qualities of the building the benefit of a doubt.

Cyrus was walking toward the building now. People barely glanced up from their drugs at him, although as he approached the door that would lead to the back offices a few people moved aside. "It's the biggest, nicest building in the city. The real palace- the mayor's house- got burnt to the ground before I was born. That was when the military cut off its ties to this place and the trains stopped running, and Thare officially became a crime town, according to Old Murph."

Cyrus opened the door and gestured for Edward and Alphonse to step inside. Inside, the shade of the ticket counter was pulled, and people were gathered in the halls, most of them asleep (or, at least, Edward hoped they were only sleeping). Cryus opened the door to the office and gestured grandly once again, allowing Edward and Alphonse to step inside. Once they were inside, Cyrus struck a match and lit the lantern hanging next to the door, bringing it inside with him as he shut the door.

"My home. Best place in all of Thare, after Old Murph's place. It's warm, it's dry, and no one messes with me," Cyrus explained, still sounding incredibly proud of this place. "I had to boot out the last person who was living here. But then, in Thare, people only answer to two things: money and alchemy. I happen to have a little of the latter on my side."

Edward examined the little room. There was a futon with a blanket in the corner, a small pile of clothing, and discarded food articles littered about, which rats darted out to claim as their own. But what caught Edward's attention was the large array on the wall, painted in heavy black paint.

"This array doesn't do anything..." Edward observed. Now that he looked closely, it barely resembled an array unless you happened to barely glance at it. It looked more like a mass of patterns fitted into a circle.

"I know that," Cyrus said dismissively, putting the lantern on the floor and sitting down on the futon. "But I tell people that I rigged it so if anyone I didn't invite comes in here, they'll explode on the spot. People from Thare aren't the smartest bunch."

"And people believe that?" Alphonse asked, examining the fake array himself now.

Cyrus nodded. "Yeah. Or, at least, it seems like they do. No one's come in to kill me in my sleep, no one's tried to take this place from me, and no one's stolen my stuff while I was out. All very real risks when you live in Thare." He leaned back on the futon, then removed his fake leg and tossed it to the side haphazardly. "Make yourself at home."

Edward looked around for a place to sit, but couldn't find anywhere to his liking. He finally resigned himself to taking a place on the floor near the futon, Alphonse seating himself close to him. The thought of spending the night here disgusted him, but then, he doubted he could do better in this town.

"You've been dodging my questions all day," Edward accused. "I can't stay here for long, and even if I could I wouldn't want to. Hart said you'd tell me about the project if I found you, and your sister agreed."

Cyrus rubbed the back of his head, his hand briefly getting tangled in his greasy hair. "I keep telling you, kid, there's no point; it didn't work."

"Mr. Hart and Miss Renea said that it might help us with what we're looking for, though," Alphonse explained, sounding a little desperate.

Cyrus looked into Alphonse's glowing eyes for a moment, then sighed. "If it worked, I'd have a leg now, wouldn't I?" he shot back. "It was a good idea that went in a bad direction. Some things are best left alone."

"And Hart and Renea didn't seem to think so. Or at least thought we should know," Edward shot back. "I came all the way to Thare to find you. I'm not going to leave empty-handed, figuritively." He didn't really want to threaten Cyrus, and he doubted he could turn him in even if he didn't tell him what he wanted to know.

Cyrus rubbed his eyelids with the thumb and index finger of his right hand. "Back in the war the four of us kind of became a group. Cal was already following Ferris around, and I met Cal and ended up getting taken in by Ferris, too. Renea mostly stuck around because she didn't trust Ferris, and she needed to keep me out of trouble, plus she worked with Cal on research and she worried about him, but either way she was arund and she got pulled in."

"She mentioned that," Alphonse said softly.

Cyrus nodded. "Yeah, she's been singing that tune since she left the military: if anyone asks, she wanted nothing to do with it. It's why she won't talk about it." He didn't sound very pleased with his sister's position on the situation. "At any rate, it was Ferris's idea. I mean, we all wanted to do something. We saw people getting shot and blown up every day. But it was Ferris that suggested that we _could_. We could restore lost limbs, or give people whose bodies were useless new bodies. I didn't think we could ever come close to pulling it off, but I was game if Cal was, and Cal did anything that Ferris told him to."

"And you said you didn't succeed," Edward finished. "So what's with the array you all have pieces of?"

Cyrus rolled up his sleeve. "What, this? I wouldn't bother with it. You won't like what it does. Ferris considered it our success. Renea didn't want to get part of it on her, since the military could use it as proof that she was involved, but Ferris talked her into it somehow." He let his sleeve fall back down.

"So what does it do?" Edward pressed, taking the picture out of his pocket in preparation of copying the next part. He had no doubt he'd be allowed to if he asked.

Cyrus was still gripping his arm, despite the tattoo being covered now. "Ferris had a much different definition of success than the rest of us. Really, I had to wonder what it was he was really trying to achieve. His idea went from regenerating body parts artifically and creating bodies that could be used to using the parts of other people. He insisted the donors would all be dead. He talked of a kind of death where the body continued to live long after the soul and all signs of life were gone, and how bodies like that were just waiting for someone like him to put them to use. He spoke of replacing failing organs, of giving the weak and disabled stronger bodies. He wanted immortality, plain and simple."

Edward was quiet, digesting what Cyrus had told him. Since he and Alphonse had discovered how the Philosopher's Stone was made, they had been looking for a way to make it or restore themselves without sacrificing human lives. And yet another lead had lead them to a possible solution that was at the expense of other people.

Alphonse leaned forward. "But if that was what the project ended up being, then why did Mr. Hart tell us to pursue it?"

Cyrus gave this some serious thought. "If he was thinking about early in the project, from before Renea got involved, then I can probably see what he was getting at."

Edward leaned forward now. "Early in the project? What do you mean?"

"Before Ferris went all creepy on us and we were studying in earnest," Cyrus clarified. "We were having some promising results with animals. Ferris got the name the Mosaic Alchemist because of what he did before he was a State Alchemist: he worked with chimeras. Sort of. He mostly worked in mosaics, or combining more than two creatures. And combinined two of the same creature to fix the flaws of one. He didn't believe in the soul, just the conscious mind. But he put a lot of that work into studying things like how lizards regrow limbs, wondering if there was a way to give humans that same sort of ability. We were heading in that direction with our research before he started in on the creepy cadaver stuff."

Edward sat back again. "So you're saying that expanding on that research could help us? Where can we find it?"

Cyrus shrugged. "I imagine Ferris would have it. And I haven't the foggiest idea of where he could be. Sorry. The military's got him hidden away somewhere, so if you're going to look for him, I'd start in Central."

Edward wanted to groan. It wasn't quite a dead end, but it was close enough. Edward couldn't very well start poking around the military, looking for someone who, for all official purposes, was currently locked in a mental institution.

"Mr...Cyrus?" Alphonse asked. Cyrus looked up at him, silently urging him to continue. "You never did tell us what the array you all have tattooed on you is supposed to do. Could you?"

Cyrus nodded and revealed his part of the array again. "Like I said, it was Ferris's greatest success: it was an array that could put a soul- or, as Ferris put it, human consciousness, into another body. It was skirting the edges of human transmutation, pushing it as far as it could get. I never actually saw the demonstration, but Ferris insisted it worked, and that Cal was a witness to it. Cal wouldn't speak much about it, though."

Edward put the photograph face-down on the floor and began to look around for something to write with. Cyrus quirked an eyebrow and reached for it to examine the incomplete array, but Edward pulled it out of the way. He found a charcoal pencil and began to sketch the part on Cyrus's bare arm. He raised his eyebrows as what it was supposed to do began to take shape.

"If it's so horrible, why did you all tattoo parts of it onto your body so that it wouldn't be forgotten? Even Renea got a part of it," Edward asked him. "I can tell what it probably does already, Cyrus. As soon as I get the last piece I won't have any doubt."

Cyrus drew his left leg up to himself and rested his chin on his knee. "Guess you wouldn't have been made a State Alchemist if you weren't smart," he observed. "So go on, smart kid. Tell me what you think it does."

Edward balled his right hand in a fist, looking at the still incomplete array on the back of the picture. "It _is_ human transmutation," he accused. "I think you all got a part of it tattooed on yourselves because all of you had some small hope that it would work, and you would need it someday. There's probably parts of your little pact I don't even know about."

"Brother-" Alphonse started.

Cyrus held up his hand to silence him, then started to laugh. It was a humorless, bitter sound, however. "Yeah, smart kid. It's something like that. Death doesn't occur until the soul is gone. Ferris told us as long as we were brought back before our souls had time to leave, then the human transmutation would work. Even Renea could get behind that idea. We're all for going when it's our time, but when our lives are suddenly snuffed out when we have a lot to do...well, wouldn't you want a second chance to keep going?"

Edward started to lunge at Cyrus, but Alphonse caught him. Cyrus, for his part, just reached over and took the photograph and flipped it over. The expression in his eyes was sad, full of grief, as he stare into the image of himself and the people he cared for when they were younger and together.

"I lost my copy," Cyrus said, swallowing. "I always wanted to ask Renea if I could see hers, but I could never get the courage to. I should have known Cal would keep his..."

Edward snatched the picture out of his hand, nearly ripping it. Alphonse gasped, but Edward shoved it into his pocket. "You can't play with human souls, and you can't bring someone back from the dead. There is nothing equivalent to a human soul. No matter how perfect your method is."

"Then how do you explain this?" Cyrus picked up his leg and heaved it at Alphonse's head. The helmet was knocked off of the suit of armor, and Alphonse cried out and knelt to pick up the helmet and put it back into place.

"How did you know?!" Alphonse exclaimed, and Edward's look said he wanted to know as well. If Cyrus and Hart could figure it out, what was giving it away? Could other people figure it out easily?

Cyrus laughed again, then began to crawl along the floor to get his leg back. "I've seen things like him before. Just before I left. You don't see many suits of armor walking around these days unless there's a catch, and that catch is usually that they're empty. I told you: Ferris sold us and what we were doing out." He slid back to his bed, leg tucked under his arm.

Edward was standing protectively in front of his brother now, daring Cyrus to try anything with him again now that he was on guard. "I want the last piece of that array. I want to be able to see what it does for myself. Hart sent me on this road, and I am going to follow it to the end."

"You're barking up the wrong tree, then," Cyrus said easily. "Ferris is missing, and I sure as hell don't know what happened to him. I went back to Central once to talk to him, and I couldn't find him anywhere. Admittedly, being wanted as I am, I couldn't stay long and look hard for him, but the fact remains if you want him and his part of the array, you have to find him on your own. He might not even be in Central anymore, although I doubt it, if the military's taken him out of the mainstream population."

Cyrus reached for the lamp and turned it down as low as he could without extinguishing the flame. "Get some sleep, kid. You're probably already thinking about taking a long walk tomorrow."

Edward wanted to shake Cyrus until he gave him answers, but he knew it would be useless: a person couldn't give up information that he didn't have. Cyrus had already curled up on his bed, leaving Edward to arrange his clothes into some semblance of a bed and cover himself up with his red duster.


	10. Mosaic

**Chapter Ten: Mosaic**

Cyrus was gone the next morning. Alphonse had suggested they go back to Old Murph's house to find him, but Edward had objected to the idea, more eager to be away from the town than in having anything to do with that man. And that decided, they made the three day trip back to South City.

Edward was relieved to find that no one suspected that he had gone to Thare when he had checked his things in South City. Really, no one seemed to have any clue he had gone south at all yet, as a call to Roy to check whether he was needed back in East City or not had revealed. When Roy had asked where he was, he had only answered vaguely that he was on his way back to Central to check on something, and would be back in East City in a few days.

"Are you really going to try to find Ferris Keyes, Brother?" Alphonse asked while they were on the train. He had been oddly quiet since they left Thare, and this question startled Edward out of his own thoughts.

Edward shrugged. "I can't just let this go, and if he's not in the hospital, then there has to be a trail leading to where he is somewhere. Maybe Lieutenant Colonel Hughes will be able to help us or something."

Alphonse made a sound that sounded something like a sigh. "I don't think this is the right track, Brother. Maybe we should concentrate on finding another lead..."

Edward glared at his brother. The truth was the same thing had occurred to him, but they had invested too much time, energy, and funds into this lead to not follow it as far as they could. Besides, there was always a chance they would find _something_ that would prove useful at the end.

"We've come too far to stop now," Edward said, his impatience tinging his voice. "Even if this doesn't give us a way to restore our bodies, we may find something out that could be useful. Everyone we've talked to has said that Ferris Keyes was the driving force and the mind behind all of this. It's logical to assume that he's the key piece we need to put this whole puzzle together."

Edward rested his forehead on the window, waiting for Alphonse to say something. When he didn't, he sighed heavily. "Besides, I guess I feel like I owe it to Hart. I mean, following this was his dying wish, and he's not the type to tell people to do things for no reason, especially not before he kills himself." Edward was suddenly gripped by a startling thought, and lifted his head off of the window. "Damn it!"

"What is it, Brother?" Alphonse asked, stunned by the sudden change in mood.

"What Cyrus said!" Edward exclaimed, as if this explained everything. When it was clear that Alphonse wasn't following him, he continued. "That Hart possibly didn't kill himself because he wanted to, but rather because he was ordered to. What if Hart was also told to send us chasing this lead?"

Alphonse leaned forward a bit more. "You mean the military wanted us to go around finding out things about Mr. Hart's friends?"

Edward nodded. "They've never been able to find Cyrus, and Renea won't talk to anyone from the military. Hart couldn't do it himself. His mind didn't work that way. Cyrus said he wouldn't even talk about things he actually did. And it makes sense: no one asking us questions, even when it was pretty obvious we were going to Thare; getting all this time off without anyone looking for me to go on an assignment or wanting to interview me about Hart again...we've just been doing what they wanted of us all along. I mean, what if this goes deeper? Cromwell's a State Alchemist. He was probably on the review board for my State Alchemist evaluation. What if he arranged for me to get a bad review so that I would need training, and for the training to be with Hart?"

"But it was the Colonel that said he wanted you to train with Mr. Hart," Alphonse pointed out. "Are you sure you're just not bitter about the evaluation?"

Edward pressed his forehead against the window. "Maybe the Colonel's in on it, too. Or maybe it was a coincidence that he thought of Hart. Maybe whatever it is that makes cooking like alchemy ties into the weakness they put on my bad evaluation so obviously that it was impossible for him _not_ to think of Hart."

"So are you going to stop following this lead?"

"No. I said I wanted to follow this thing through to the end. I want to find out whatever it is that the military wants me to find out, and why it was so important that it was worth sending me all over Amestris, even the illegal parts." Edward lifted his head from the glass slightly, then brought it back down somewhat hard, as if he intended to hurt himself. "I just can't believe how much this whole thing has started to suck..."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It was very late at night when Renea heard the knock at her door. So late, in fact, that not only were the kids in bed already, but so was she. She pulled on her bathrobe and contemplated telling the person to go away and come back at a civil hour, but there were a number of people who would come to see her late at night for very good reasons. Enough that answering the door seemed like a good idea.

Renea opened the door, squinting to make out the figure standing in the dark. Whoever it was was wearing a long coat, a ripped hat, and dark sunglasses. "Can I help you?" she asked, punctuating her question with a yawn.

The person nodded, then looked around for a few moments. Then they leaned forward, stopping when it was obvious that Renea planned to step back from him. "It's me, Sis," Cyrus whispered.

"Cyrus?!" Renea exclaimed, opening the door wider and ushering her brother indoors quickly, before anyone else could notice her late night visitor. She hardly noticed his limp as he made his way over to her sofa and threw himself down. He then removed the hat and sunglasses, revealing his wild, long hair and thin, unshaven face.

"Cyrus, what the hell are you doing here?" Renea demanded, her voice a sharp whisper. She would really rather Cyrus left without alerting the children to the fact that he was here.

Cyrus rubbed the back of his head. "I got a visit from a couple of boys," he started, but his voice was a normal speaking tone, causing Renea to interrupt him with a gesture to keep his voice down. He lowered his voice and continued. "They told me Cal was dead. Is that true?"

Renea nodded slowly. "That's what I was told. I didn't attend any sort of funeral or see the body itself, though."

Cyrus flinched, and Renea realized how callous she'd sounded. She didn't get an opportunity to apologize, however. "Is that why you sent those kids after me?"

Renea shook her head. "They wanted to know about the project. Cal put it in their mind."

"Cal couldn't have put it in their minds!" Cyrus snapped.

Renea looked toward the stairwell to make sure none of her children were sitting on it. "Cyrus, calm down. We have no clue what Cal was thinking when he killed himself. I know it probably upsets you, but we knew he wasn't balanced and was very unhappy."

Cyrus shook his head. "This isn't about me not wanting to think about Cal killing himself. I can think of situations where he would. But Cal's mind worked in a way that he rarely said or did things unless someone ordered him to, and I don't think those boys had enough authority over him to get him to talk if he was their teacher. He didn't and couldn't talk about even what he did, because Ferris told him not to and he obeyed Ferris over anyone else, even a higher ranking officer."

Renea sighed and seated herself on the opposite end of the sofa. "So you think someone got mad at him because he wouldn't talk about it and made him tell the boys to find us and then kill himself."

Cyrus shrugged. "It makes sense to me. We're the only two people the military doesn't have access to to ask, you because you're a civilian and they still need your coperation, and me because they haven't a clue where I am." He sighed. "Those boys told me that Cal went down to his lab with Cromwell. They don't know what was said, but the lab was blown up, and then Cromwell threatened Cal with a courtmartial if he didn't follow orders. That's just the kind of threat Cal would respond to: he'd sooner die than have his superiours against him."

Renea rubbed her temples. "So why are you here all of sudden? To tell me you think Cal was killed in a military conspiracy? I don't need this, Cyrus. The military is on my ass about you as it is. I told you, the more you tell me, the more the military is going to have against me because I'm lying."

Cyrus shook his head and stood up. "I came here to say good-bye."

Renea leapt to her feet. "What do you mean 'good-bye'?! Where are you going?!"

Cyrus smiled sadly. "To Central. If I don't get caught on my way there, there's something I've got to do. And then I'm turning myself in. I mean, desertion...that's not that serious a crime. I may even get out of prison by the time Celia's kids get married."

Renea reached out for her brother, but he was already tucking his hair into his hat and putting on his sunglasses. "Cyrus, what are you going to do?"

"Something I have to do," Cyrus said simply. "Tell the kids I love them. Especially Celia." He stepped out of the door, but before he could close it, Renea caught it.

"Cyrus-"

"You can't tell me this isn't the right thing to do. You and the kids won't get hounded by the military anymore," Cyrus interrupted. Then he limped toward the train station, blending into the dark night.

Renea didn't go back to bed. She heard the sounds of the late train leaving, a sound that everyone was used to and could sleep through, and knew her brother was on his way to meet his fate. She went into the kitchen and seated herself on the counter, reaching into a cupboard and pulling out a bottle of scotch that had gone untouched since her husband had died and poured herself a glass.

A couple of glasses later, she noticed the sun coming up in the window. The earliest morning train would be arriving soon, and the next train to Central would be leaving in a few hours. She sighed, put the scotch back into the high cupboard, and rinsed the glass out and left it in the sink.

Then Renea went upstairs and began to dress, not even bothering to pack anything that didn't fit into the pockets of her coat. "Damn you, Cyrus..." she muttered, then she went to wake up her children and send them to a neighbor's house.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Edward was starting to get frustrated with the large portions of information that were unavailable to him. Either key files had been destroyed (he'd finally relented and called Scieszka, and had been calling her more or less every hour with another list of file numbers), or the information lead him to dead ends and lies.

Ferris Keyes' entire career seemed to operate in such a fashion, with large pieces of information omitted from any of his official records. Edward had succeeded in finding some of his research notes, but they were either incomplete or short, vague reports that didn't give much information at all. Many of the numbers he had called in to Scieszka had been from the lists of cases that Keyes had been part of the investigation of, and although he wasn't sure what sort of clues he could expect to find there, it was better than nothing.

"How about this, Brother?" Alphonse asked, holding up another folder bearing Ferris Keyes' name. "This is information on his pre-military life. He gave a voluntary interview after he was promoted to colonel, during his State Alchemist evaluation."

Edward took the folder from Alphonse and lay it open on the table, over a collection of other folders that he had yet to look at and were in no particular order. He then began to skim the contents of the folder, trying to find anything that would give him a clue as to where Keyes could be now.

Edward scanned the contents casually, not really holding out any hope that it would reveal anything that the dozens of other files about him had. Suddenly, his eyes went wide, and he pointed at a line on the page. "Al, look at this."

Alphonse leaned over to look, and Edward backed up a bit so that he wouldn't be squished by his brother's metal frame. "Ferris Keyes has a younger brother," Alphonse concluded from his reading. "But how does this help us?"

"If he has a brother, then maybe his brother knows where he is!" Edward cried excitedly. He continued to read. The paper claimed that Keyes had raised Amelin Keyes, who was sixteen years younger than him. However, there was nothing about the current whereabouts of the boy, who would be a young man by now, certainly.

Edward closed the file. "If his brother is a private citizen, he should be much easier to find than Keyes. And if we find him, then we can persuade him to tell us what he knows about where Keyes is. I mean, I got Renea to tell us where her brother is, right?" Barely, but that was beside the point.

Alphonse nodded. "But what if he doesn't know? It's entirely possible that Keyes didn't or couldn't tell his brother where he is. Maybe his brother thinks he's in the hospital, too."

Edward shrugged. "Well, we'll find out after we find him, won't we?" He then went over to the section with personnel files. "Let's make sure he's not in the military first. Then we'll work on finding him..."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"We'll have to ask you to be quiet. He's resting. He should wake up on his own soon, though," the nurse told Edward gently as she guided him into a sunlit room. There was a bed in the center, and laying in it was a very delicate looking boy with long white-blonde hair. His skin was very pale, making him look like he was already dead, and he looked much younger than he actually had to be. His breathing sounded labored, each breath a weeze.

Edward had asked Alphonse to stay in the waiting room of the hospital as the nurse had brought him to see Amelin Keyes. He had hoped that the young man would be in better condition, and that his current residence at the hospital was a recent and temporary development, but when he had come and asked to see him, the nurse had explained that he had been in the hospital for quite some time with no hope of ever leaving alive.

"His brother used to come and see him all the time, but about five years ago he just stopped. Amelin still asks for him from time to time," the nurse had explained while guiding Edward through the hallway. "The poor boy never had any other visitors."

Edward wasn't sure what to do now. His hopes that Amelin would know where his brother was were dashed; he seated himself in a chair in the room and wondered if there was a chance he could leave without him knowing he was ever there. Even if Amelin knew where Keyes was, Edward wasn't sure he could ask him about it without feeling guilty for only seeing someone who was sick and alone to ask him about his older brother.

Amelin began to cough, and a fragile hand raised to cover his mouth. Once the coughing fit had passed, Amelin lay awake in bed, staring up at the ceiling, and Edward could tell from the look of his dark eyes that he couldn't see anything at all.

"Who's there?" he managed to choke out, although his voice sounded curious rather than frightened.

Edward once more contemplated leaving, but he knew that Amelin could tell he was there, and that it would be horribly rude and disrespectful to leave now. He cleared his throat. "I'm Edward Elric."

Amelin seemed to contemplate this name for a few moments. He suddenly laughed a little, although the laugh dissolved into a coughing fit. Once it had passed, he spoke again, having to pause to take a deep breath at various points. "I've heard stories about you....from the nurses. You come to this...hospital quite often." He coughed again. "W-what are you...doing here...seeing me?"

Edward bit his lip. He wasn't sure how to answer that question. He couldn't say "I was going to ask you about your brother until I realized you were dying. Sorry to bother you", but he needed to say _something_. "I-I was trying to find things about your brother."

Amelin gasped and coughed again."H-have you seen Ferris? D-did he....say why he doesn't....come see me anymore?"

Edward sighed. "No. I was hoping you could help me with that. He's...disappeared. No one seems to know where he is right now. The military says he's in this hospital, but he's not."

"Of course not," Amelin confirmed. He struggled a bit and managed to sit up. "Are you...in the military?"

Edward nodded, then caught himself. "Yeah, I am. I'm a State Alchemist."

"Do you...have a watch?" Amelin asked.

Edward found himself wondering why everyone asked this of him, although he had to admit it was the quickest way to tell if someone was a State Alchemist or not. "Yeah, I do."

"C-can I see?" Amelin asked, holding out one frail hand.

Edward almost asked how, but changed his mind. He unclipped it from his belt and walked over the bed and handed it to Amelin, who seemed to be having some trouble holding the silver watch. His hands dropped to his lap, and he began to feel the front with the fingers of his left hand.

"It's just like Ferris's," he said softly.

Edward took it back gently. "Yeah. The watches tend to all be alike," he explained. He clipped the watch back onto his belt loop and put it back into his pocket. "Amelin...um...when I said your brother wasn't in the hospital, you said said 'of course not'. Do...do you know where he really is?"

Amelin began to cough again, then went quiet. He laid back down in the bed, unseeing eyes facing the ceiling. "Ferris said...he was going to work...in the labs. That he...wouldn't see me...for a while. But he would...make me better."

Suddenly, the reason for Keyes' seemingly self-serving research became obvious to Edward. He wondered if Hart, Cyrus or Renea knew about his dying little brother, but if they did it would have been obvious to them as well: he wanted his brother to survive. He wanted to fix his sickly body, or failing that, find him a new one.

In that, Keyes and Edward weren't entirely unalike. But Ferris Keyes had no desire to find the Philosopher's Stone, it seemed. He didn't believe in the soul, and from what Edward had heard and read about him, he was unlikely to believe in the Philosopher's Stone, either. He was a scientist of the most cynical variety, the kind who only believed in the tangible, the things that he could see and feel and prove.

"Do you know which lab?" Edward asked Amelin, hoping beyond hope that it hadn't been the fifth, as the military cover-up of his current location seemed to imply.

Amelin shook his head slowly. "He...didn't say."

The nurse stepped into the room then, carrying with her a syringe. "I'm sorry, Mr. Elric, but Amelin needs his medicine and then to rest. You can come and see him some other time."

Edward watched as the nurse injected the contents of the needle into one of his spindly arms, knowing it was probably morphine or something similar to dull the pain that the boy was bound to be feeling. "All right. It was nice talking to you," Edward said politely.

Amelin coughed hard. "It was...nice," he parroted. Edward waved, more to the nurse than to him, and stepped back out into the hall and down toward the waiting room, where Alphonse was sitting, waiting patiently for him.

"How did it go, Brother?" Alphonse asked, rising from his place on a sofa and going to meet Edward.

Edward sighed and shook his head. "He hasn't seen his brother in years. He said last that he heard of him, he was working in one of the labs. That narrows it down, but we can hardly start tearing through all the labs looking for him, and even if we could, with this level of secrecy it's possible he was in the fifth lab, in which case, if he's alive he could be anywhere by now."

They stepped out of the hospital, into the sunny streets of Central. Edward felt bad about it, but he was glad to be away from the dying boy. He didn't like to be reminded of his own mortality more often than he had to, and he felt guilty visiting him with an ulteriour motive rather than to keep him company.

"So what are we going to do now, Brother?" Alphonse asked.

It was a good question, and one that Edward didn't immediately have an answer to. He still didn't want to have to give up after coming this far, but they were at the end of their leads. "I don't know," Edward confessed at last. "Find more clues, I guess."

Alphonse didn't say anything else, and Edward was glad for it. He hated wasting so much time, and as such, he stubbornly refused to give up this lead until he followed it to the very end, even if it seemed impossible to do so. The military rarely succeeded in hiding something so completely that it was impossible to find it if you didn't look hard enough, and Edward had the advantage of having gotten past ttheir smokescreens to find the fifth lab and discovering what the Philosopher's Stone was made of already. Finding one man should have been easy.

"Maybe you should ask the Colonel," Alphonse asked after Edward had been quiet for quite some time. "He knew where Dr. Marcoh was. Maybe he knows where Colonel Keyes is as well."

Edward shook his lip. "Dr. Marcoh was different. He wasn't in the military anymore, for one thing, and Mustang had helped him. I don't think he has any more idea of where Keyes is than we do."

They were passing a line of stores now. Edward usually didn't pay much attention to the stores or the people in the city, but he found himself scanning the crowds, as if expecting to see Ferris Keyes walking toward them. He glanced at a shop that had cooking equipment in the window, and noticed someone with long black hair in a loose ponytail standing in front of it. He jumped a little, as if he'd seen a ghost.

Without stopping to warn Alphonse, Edward stepped up to the window to get a look at the person's face to reassure himself that this wasn't Hart, and that Hart was, indeed, dead. As he stepped in for a closer look, a pair of light blue eyes turned to face him.

"Yes, can I help you?" the owner of said blue eyes asked.

Edward blinked a few times. This wasn't Hart. Not Calvinia Hart, anyway. This was a girl who had to be around his own age, whose features looked very much like Hart's. But it was too much of a coincidence to think this could be his missing daughter...wasn't it?

"Um...sorry, I thought you were someone I know," Edward mumbled. He examined her for a few more moments. "Are you Keyes Hart, by any chance?"

Keyes nodded slowly. "Yeah, I am. Um...do I know you?"

Edward shook his head. "This...is kind of awkward, actually. I kinda know your father, Calvinia Hart."

Keyes' eyes narrowed. "What does my father have to do with anything?" she asked, her voice low and angry. "He left us. He didn't even bother to say good-bye."

Alphonse stepped up to her then. "Keyes, your father taught my brother how to cook. He never left you or your mother. Your mother left him while he was away at war, and he thought you were dead. He missed you terribly."

"Liar!" Keyes shouted. "Why would Mom lie to me?! He was a horrible man and he left us! Ferris was more of a father than he'd ever be!"

Edward's eyes widened. "Ferris...?"

Alphonse broke in before Edward managed to ask the obvious question, however. "Keyes, that's not true! Your father loved and missed you! He kept your picture in his lab!"

Keyes shook her head. "He sent you, didn't he? He wants to get to know me now! Well, it's too late!"

"Your father's dead!" Edward cried out. The angry expression melted off of Keyes' face, and she looked at him as if she couldn't believe what she'd heard. "Your father killed himself."

Keyes leaned against the shop window. "But why?" she asked softly.

"Why do you think? He thought his wife and daughter were dead, the military was breathing down his neck to do things he was against, and he had no one and nothing else," Edward explained bitterly.

"Brother..." Alphonse gasped.

"You mentioned someone named Ferris," Edward continued. "Are you talking about Ferris Keyes?"

Keyes nodded. "Mom was seeing him for a long time. She stopped recently," she confessed, although the expression on her face was one that Edward was familiar with: that of someone whose entire worldview had been turned upside.

Edward reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, but she backed away from it. "Do you remember where he said he was working?"

"The third lab," Keyes said softly. She looked over at Alphonse now. "What was my father like?"

Alphonse rubbed the back of his helmet. "Well...he was a really good cook, and a brilliant alchemist. And he was very kind and gentle."

"Mom said he's the reason I don't read or write well," she muttered. She turned to look away from them. "Who are you two, anyway?"

"Edward Elric," Edward introduced. "And this is my little brother, Alphonse."

Keyes nodded, then started to walk away. Alphonse made like he was going to follow her, but Edward held his arm out to keep him from passing him. "Just...let her go. We got what we need."


	11. Loss

**Chapter 11: Loss**

Cyrus spent his day in Central trying to keep as low a profile as possible. After all, it just wouldn't do to get caught and thrown into prison before he had a chance to tie up a few loose ends, so to speak. It was this thought that had him standing at a wall at the third laboratory late at night, drawing a transmutation circle on the wall. He set off the transmutation, and the ground rippled slightly, before a mesh of roots leading up to the high window shot up..

With quite a bit of difficulty due to his leg, Cyrus managed to climb the roots, seating himself precariously at the top. He knocked on the small window, and much to his surprise, it swung open. He considered climbing in, but it was too small, and he couldn't risk getting caught trying another transmutation.

"Ferris? Are you in there?" Cyrus asked softly. There was no answer. "Ferris, come on. It's me, Cyrus. I'm really risking my ass coming to get you, and I know you're in there."

There was no response for quite some time. Finally, a low voice came from inside of the room. "What do you want, Cyrus?" Keyes asked, as if Cyrus was bothering him at his window every night.

"I'd be a little more surprised than that, pal. I'm going to end up in prison when this is all said and done," Cyrus pointed out. He sighed and crossed his arms. "Cal's dead. He killed himself, although you wouldn't know it if you saw his grave. The military must be covering it up, because if his death were ruled a suicide he'd have lost his rank and been buried in a pauper's grave."

There was another long silence. "So what do you want me to do?"

"Damn it, he's your best friend!" Cyrus snapped. "He thought you were the best thing ever! And are you forgetting our promise so soon?!"

"I don't think keeping our promise would be wise," Keyes said. His voice sounded bitter, and Cyrus wondered if he was more upset about Hart's death than he was letting on.

"We have to at least try it, Ferris. Are you with me or not?"

"We don't have all of the parts of the array. Even if we dig up Calvinia and get his part, we don't have your sister's."

"That's where you're wrong. Here, catch," Cyrus said with a smile, taking a singed photograph with the pieces of the array on the back from his pocket. "Compliments of the kid who told me that Cal was dead, although I don't think he knows I took it yet. I think that Cal would much rather we have that than him, anyway. Although I have to give the kid credit for managing to get Renea's piece." He pushed the photograph through the open window, trusting that Keyes would catch it, or at least pick it up if he didn't. "He's only been dead for a few days. It should probably still work. Right?"

"What the hell are you expecting to do with this? Do you even know what it does?"

"Not really. It's been so long since I've seen all the parts together, and I never really got all that good a look the first time. I gave those boys a story about it, though. I'm still a good liar. Better, since I've been living in Thare. But it's human transmutation right? Cal was the one who sent them out looking for the parts of it, so I figured that was a big clue that he wanted someone to use it. Wanted one of us."

The picture fluttered back out of the window, and Cyrus nearly fell off of the roots supporting him as he leaned to catch it. "Cyrus, if Calvinia killed himself, he was ordered to. He was probably also ordered to send those boys out to get yours and Renea's parts of the array. This isn't a big sign that Calvinia wants to put it to use. I am sure that you have connected all of this already. You're capable of logic some of the time."

Cyrus tucked the photograph into his coat pocket. There was a familiar weight there, and he tugged on it, pulling out a tarnished silver watch on a broken chain. When people asked to see his watch when he told them he used to be a State Alchemist before he ran, he often lied and said that it had been stolen. He pushed the button on the top of it to open it. Pressed into the side opposite the face was a photograph. In fact, it was from a copy of the same photograph he had stolen from the Elric brothers: he had cut Hart out of the picture, careful not to include either Keyes or his sister in it, and then he had pressed it into the watch, as if it were a locket.

"I'm going to go and try it. With or without you, with or without your part of the array. I owe it to Cal."

Cyrus waited a few moments, but there was no response. He began to climb down the roots, and had just come down onto the ground when the light of a transmutation reaction came from the wall just next to it. A door appeared, and Keyes stepped out of it.

Cyrus didn't even react to Keyes' appearance. He just smiled and stretched. "I knew you'd want in."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Fuhrer, sir," a nervous officer said upon being let into the spacious office, saluting the entire time as if his hand were glued to his forehead. It was late at night, and Fuhrer King Bradley had been roused from bed to attend to an important emergency situation. Knowing that he would most likely not be amused by this, the officers responsible for reporting the events to him had drawn lots, and this particular unfortunate officer had gotten the short straw, meaning he had to deliver the bad news.

However, if the Fuhrer was angry, he wasn't letting it on. He looked well rested and anxious to hear what had to be said, but otherwise calm. "What is it, Lieutenant?" he asked patiently. He acted as if he were in his office at midday and the officers were coming to report a paperwork error, not that it was some horrible late hour that had required him to get out of his warm bed and come to work for what had to have been a terrible crisis indeed.

Still saluting, the Lieutenant thought hard about how to phrase what he had to tell the Fuhrer. "Fuhrer, sir, it's about Colonel Ferris Keyes."

Bradley started to look less than unflappable. The Lieutenant knew that bringing up the man at all wouldn't make him happy: Colonel Keyes' entire military career had been spotted with dark spots that had gotten the attention of the very top, and many people wondered how he could get so many second chances and pardons without anything more than a formal reprimand, or how he could ascend to such a high rank in spite of the reprimands.

"What about the Colonel?" he pressed.

The Lieutenant cleared his throat. "He's...gone. Our investigators have reason to believe he left with Cyrus Walker. Someone suggested this may be connected to Lieutenant Colonel Hart's death."

Officially, Hart's death was ruled a possible homicide. After all, no one had seen him pull the trigger and take his own life, and if his death were ruled a suicide, what had driven him there would come out eventually. But there was no doubt in any of the officers' minds that Hart had commited suicide.

"Cyrus Walker is in Central?" Bradley asked, barely acknowledging what, for all intents and purposes, was an escape from Keyes.

The Lieutenant nodded. "He is. We have the military police keeping an eye out for the both of them, but all things considered, we thought that you should know. There's one more thing, sir..."

Bradley nodded. "Go on."

The Lieutenant stared at his feet, which made the salute seem mocking and disrespectful. "Lieutenant Colonel Hart's grave has been vandalized, and his body is gone."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Edward and Alphonse had expected to creep around the third laboratory and look for any signs of where Ferris Keyes could be. They were rather surprised to see the entire place was swarming with military police, all of whom seemed to be frantically searching for something.

One of the police officers glanced up from where he was looking around the paremeter of the building and examined the new arrivals for a moment, as if trying to connect something in his mind. Suddenly, he began to run toward them, and Edward found himself feeling very nervous.

"You're the Elric brothers, right?" the young police officer asked them. He didn't sound like he was eager to get them into trouble, at least.

Edward nodded. "Yeah, we are. I'm Edward," he added, lest his brother be addressed regarding military business.

The officer nodded. "Yeah, we were told to keep an eye out for a little guy in a red coat and a big guy in armor coming around here." Alphonse held Edward back as the officer continued, apparently not noticing that he had said something to make Edward so angry. "The Fuhrer wants to see you. He said that anyone who sees you has to bring you straight to him." Now he sounded excited, like he expected a reward for finding the brothers and bringing them to the leader of the country.

At the mention of the Fuhrer, Edward suddenly felt nervous. Was what he was doing during his time off discovered? Did someone report that he had gone to Thare? None of those things would get the attention of the Fuhrer, however, but he couldn't think of what else he had done lately that would get him in trouble.

"What's going on here?" Alphonse asked as the young man began to lead them both away from the scene.

The officer bit his lip. "One of the specimens escaped. A really important one. I'm not supposed to talk about it, but the rumor is someone wanted by the military took him- it," he said at last. He then began to lead the brothers toward Central Headquarters.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Fuhrer was seated at his desk when Edward and Alphonse were shown into his office, his secretary typing away in the corner. Edward glanced at the secretary and felt the slight chill of familiarity as he did so, but he quickly took his eyes off of her and guided them to the Fuhrer, where they belonged.

"Have a seat, boys," Bradley offered warmly. This was what bothered Edward about the Fuhrer: the fact that he could always seem so jovial and carefree. It made telling what he was feeling very difficult, and made Edward nervous.

Edward took the offered seat, but Alphonse assessed the size of the chair next to him and decided to stand behind his brother's instead. Bradley laughed heartily at this display. "Yes, perhaps it's wiser you didn't take that seat, Alphonse," he said cheerfully.

"Sir, with all due respect, why were you looking for us?" Edward asked, not sure if he was out of line or not. He was never entirely sure how to act in the presence of the highest ranking officer in the military and leader of the country. He liked to think he wasn't as nervous around him as others seemed to be, having met him in the past, but apparently he was mistaken.

Bradley's cheerful expression faltered a bit, making Edward's heart skip a beat. "I hear you've been doing quite a bit of research in your free time following Lieutenant Colonel Hart's unexpected death. And quite a bit of travel."

Edward nodded. "Yes, we have. It was...a personal project."

Bradley nodded. "A personal project that involved researching Colonel Ferris Keyes, and getting in contact with Renea Cornig, and making an unauthorized visit to Thare," he accused, and Edward was sure he was going to get it. "If you wanted to get involved in this matter, you could have just asked. We would have authorized your trip. You would have gotten paid for it. Tell me, did you really succeed in finding Cyrus Walker?"

Edward considered how he should respond to this. He really couldn't lie. Not entirely, anyway. He had never intended to turn in Cyrus, but even if he had, Cyrus had run off before he could. "Yes, we did. But he got away from us."

"I'm sure he did," Bradley said with a nod. "But you must have done something right: apparently, he has come to Central. Now, confidentially, Major Walker was never the most...logical man ever to receive a State Alchemist's certification, but I have no doubt he would risk doing anything in Central unless he intended to turn himself in or get caught."

Edward was shocked to hear this. Was this the criminal that the young military police officer had mentioned? Then what was the specimen that he had stolen?

"I am going to let you in on a secret, Edward," Bradley continued. "I am going to let you in on this secret because I trust that you planned to report everything you had done regarding Cyrus Walker and his friends to your commanding officer anyway, and you just hadn't had the opportunity. That secret, Edward, is that the reason for the...excitement at the third laboratory is Colonel Ferris Keyes has left. This was something he was not permitted to do, as he had been working there in exchange for us not imprisoning him for crimes he committed during the war."

Edward nodded. "Why are you telling me this, though? I never actually met Keyes."

Bradley steepled his fingers. "No, I suppose you didn't. But you may be able to tell us where he went none the less. When you met Cyrus Walker, did he mention anything that may have given an indication of what he planned to do?"

Edward shook his head. "No, he didn't. He was very upset to hear that Hart had killed himself, though."

Bradley flinched. "Edward, Lieutenant Colonel Hart's death was ruled a possible homicide and is being investigated, so I would ask that you not fuel the rumors that he committed suicide."

"A homicide?!" Edward cried. "Hart shot himself in his locked basement, where there were no windows! I got asked to tell the story a thousand times, and you don't even believe me?!" He thought better of his outburst. "Sir."

Bradley leaned forward. "But no one saw him do it, and your story was rather suspect, especially since that incident sent you out looking for people you had no way of having heard of before. Really, you should feel quite fortunate you haven't been considered a suspect." Edward looked shocked. "Think of it this way: anyone who commits suicide in the military loses their rank. It would be up to his family to bury him. He'd have been put in an unmarked grave, as he has no family. This way, he got to be buried with full military honors."

Edward wanted to further object to this treatment of Hart's death, and the implication that he would be put under suspicion if he spoke up about it, but there was really nothing that he could do. Besides, Bradley was right: Hart deserved respect, and even if he got it for the wrong reasons, it was better than not getting it at all.

Bradley seemed content that Edward was in line now. "If you know anything about this, I trust that you'll let your commanding officers know," he said. It was a thinly-vieled order, and one that Edward wasn't going to object to.

"Of course, sir," Edward said, giving a vague salute. He stood without being told to, but still had enough sense to wait until he was dismissed to leave.

"You're dismissed," Bradley said, waving dismissively.

Edward was more than happy to leave the office.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Renea wasn't sure how she knew to find them at Hart's house. Perhaps it was just common sense: it would be empty and sealed off, and it would have a decent lab for what she knew Cyrus was going to attempt to do. Had he convinced Keyes to get in on the plan? It seemed likely, if he had managed to find him.

Renea looked around for a few moments, then took a piece of chalk out of her pocket, prepared to transmute the lock to get it open. She was surprised, however, when she put her chalk on the door and it came open slightly. Pocketing the chalk, she pushed the door open and stepped inside. "Where are you two?!" she shouted, slamming the door shut behind her, no longer caring who caught her. She'd just pin it all on those fools, take whatever punishment she got for trespassing, and go back home to her children. Thinking that way, she rather hoped she got caught.

"Down here!" a voice called from inside of the house. Rolling her eyes, she followed the sound toward the door in the hallway, which lead down into the basement. The basement smelled horrible, of burnt wood and blood and decay, and she coughed a little and pulled her goggles up over her eyes, not sure what she would encounter down there.

"Catch one little piece of shrapnel near the eye and you get a lifelong obsession with goggles, eh, Sis?" Cyrus said by way of greeting.

Renea snorted. "You act like wearing goggles in the lab isn't a smart thing to do. Or like losing an eye is no big deal. What the hell are you doing down here?"

Cyrus was leaning against a charred table, which didn't seem like it was going to support his weight for long. There was a bottle of liquor near him, but he didn't seem to be drinking it himself. The blood drops on the bottle revealed that it had been probably been the last thing Hart had had before he had died.

On the floor there was already a chalked array. Renea was surprised when she recognized what it was, and rubbed her arm, wondering how they had gotten her part of it. Laying in the array was a figure covered in a white sheet, and she didn't have to ask what it was. The smell alone gave it away.

"You're a smart lady, Sis. I'd think what we're up to would be pretty obvious," Cyrus shot back.

Someone else stepped out of the corner, into the low light of the lantern, and Renea gasped and took a step back. It was obviously Keyes...mostly, anyway. A good portion of the left side of his face was made up of dark skin, and his left eye was a familiar shade of red. There was a streak of black hair on the left side running through the blonde, and the arm on his left side was also dark and ill-fit to his body.

"Pretty neat, huh?" Cyrus asked cheerfully. "Our project worked out. Well, it didn't work out well for the Ishbalan, I guess."

Renea nodded slowly. "Ferris...it's been a while. Where have you been?"

Cyrus laughed. "Oh, let me answer that, Ferris! He spent some time sleeping with Cal's wife, and then he went on to sell us out and get locked in a lab, forced to use our research. Isn't that right, Ferris?"

Keyes sighed. "You're the one who asked me to help, Cyrus. If you're going to snipe at me all night, I'll just go back. The military is probably tearing apart Central trying to find me."

Renea held up her hands. "Look, back up a bit, all right? This is illegal and Ferris, you know better than anyone here that this doesn't work. Even if it did, who's to say that Cal wants to be brought back? He witnessed a human transmutation. He never seemed very happy about it."

"We made a promise!" Cyrus shouted, backing away just as the table fell over. "If anything happened to one of us, the others would bring them back! Cal was part of that promise, and we have to keep it!"

Renea stepped further into the room, grabbing a hold of her brother's shoulders and shaking him soundly. "Cyrus, think for once in your damn life! We know you were in love with him! You're the one who was stupid enough to never tell him after Eleanora was gone! Things might have been different if you had, but it's too late now! Just let him go!"

Cyrus shrugged away. "Oh, so a dead husband makes you the be-all, end-all expert on these things now?! Things are different for us, okay?! And even if they aren't, Cal's still waiting for us!"

He stepped up to the array, Renea still following close behind, and Keyes standing on the other side. "You're just going to let him do this?!" she yelled at him.

Keyes shrugged. "A promise is a promise. I'm curious to see how this works, anyway."

Cyrus got down on his hands and knees, pressing his hands to the array. "Cyrus, no!" Renea shouted. And the next few moments were a blur.

Renea got down on her hands and knees as well, reaching for Cyrus only to be pushed into the array. The transmutation began, and Renea crawled onto her knees, trying to get out of the circle, trying to stop her brother. Ferris raised his eyebrows, watched the sheet beginning to slide off the body as the energy from the reaction moved it, then ran past the circle and up the stairs.

The reaction intensified for just a few moments, and the last thing Renea saw was blood pouring from her brother's mouth. He raised his hands, but they were both gone. Then she saw nothing, despite her green eyes being wide open behind their goggles, and blood tumbled out of her mouth. She fell forward over the body, which moved slightly beneath the sheet, but there was no way she could have known this now.


	12. Dead End

**Chapter Twelve: Dead End**

Edward and Alphonse happened to pass by Hart's house on their way back to their own hotel when they noticed a commotion there, as great, if not greater, than the excitement that had ensued the night that Hart had killed himself. Edward took his watch out of his pocket and held it up to show the military police, who let both of the brothers through.

They had just reached the living room of the house when they saw Cromwell. Edward narrowed his eyes. Knowing there was no getting past him, he just examined the number of people around him. One of them he recognized as Ferris Keyes, although parts of his body had apparently been replaced by parts of an Ishbalan.

Cromwell caught sight of the brothers and turned to face them. "You two shouldn't be here," he barked at them.

Edward looked around again. "What happened here?" he asked, ignoring Cromwell's statement. He had never seen so many military personnel gathered in one place.

A hand came down on Edward's shoulder, causing him to jump and look behind him. Much to his amazement, the Fuhrer himself was standing there, wearing his usual jovial expression. "I should have known you'd want to get a closer look. You're an inquisitive one," he said, his voice friendly and at the same time somewhat warning. Bradley's gaze wandered over to the hall that lead to Hart's laboratory. "Apparently someone attempted a human transmutation here, just moments before military police could respond to a report of someone trespassing here."

"Colonel Keyes witnessed it," Cromwell added. "But he says he wasn't a part of it. And that the woman was involved accidently. She's dead, anyway."

Keyes nodded, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the Elric brothers. "I tried to stop them. I knew what Cyrus- Major Walker- was going to attempt. That's why I left the laboratory."

Cromwell put a big hand on Keyes' shoulder. "I am sure no one will bregrudge you for that. This used to be your area of expertise, after all." He looked over at the Fuhrer. "Of course, that's up to you, sir," he added nervously.

Cyrus Walker was being escorted up the stairs now, blood still covering the front of his face, and his hands- or where they should be- tightly bandaged. Bradley stepped up to him, glaring at him. "What do you have to say for yourself, Major Walker?"

"Nothing, sir," one of the police officers said nervously. "He seems to have had his tongue forcibly removed."

"The woman seems to be Renea Walker. Or Renea Cornig, as I believe she's called now," another man added. "According to Colonel Keyes, anyway. She was his sister. She got in the way while he was attempting the transmutation."

Cyrus looked at the floor, obviously not going to deny these allegations. Edward was just stunned. Cyrus had attempted a human transmutation? And he had killed Renea in the process? But what would become of her children now?

"What's going to happen to him?" Alphonse asked as Cyrus was lead out of the house, obviously afraid of what would become of them if their secret was found out, and equally saddened by what Cyrus had done to Renea.

Bradley sighed and shook his head. "This is a very serious crime, I'm afraid. One of the most serious anyone can commit. It's bad enough that he attempted a human transmutation, but that attempt lead to the death of another. I fear this calls for the most severe punishment."

Edward began to glare at Cyrus, feeling enraged by what he had done. He didn't even object to the Fuhrer all but saying that he would be executed for it. Cyrus must have known this, because he just shook his head as he was lead out of the house.

"You are all dismissed," Bradley said to the Elrics as well as Cromwell and Keyes. "Brigidier General Cromwell, please escort Colonel Keyes back to the third laboratory."

Cromwell began to lead Keyes out of the house as Bradley headed in the direction of the laboratory.

"What about her kids?" Alphonse asked softly, voicing Edward's earlier thought.

Bradley stopped in his tracks and seemed to consider this. "I will make sure that they are notified." He then went back to the open door, disappearing through it and going down into the laboratory.

Edward was dying to ask someone about what had become of what Cyrus had brought back, but he knew that he couldn't without letting them know what he knew about human transmutation, and how he knew it. He sighed, looking at his surroundings one last time. Outside of the laboratory, the house was still so calm and neat and as he remembered it, even swarming with people.

"Come on, Al," he said, leading the way out of the house.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Edward was sitting on his suitcase in front of the hotel, having checked out. He didn't seem inclined to move toward the train station to head back to East City, however. Not just yet, anyway. It had started to rain, just the lightest of sprinkles, but he could hear it echoing off of the hollow suit of armor standing beside him.

"Brother, you should go inside before you catch a cold," Alphonse advised his depressed older brother.

Edward shook his head and sighed. "I called the Colonel. I told him there was something else we have to do. He made a comment about how we're attracting a lot of trouble. Maybe he's right."

Alphonse crouched down next to his brother. "You're not really blaming yourself for all of this, are you, Brother?"

"Why not?" Edward shot back. "I didn't have a choice when it came to learning from Hart, but I didn't have to go off trying to find all of his friends. It wasn't a lead about the Philosopher's Stone. I had no reason to go after it. If I hadn't, Cyrus never would have tried the human transmutation, and Renea would still be alive."

"That's not true!" Alphonse snapped. "You were just obeying Mr. Hart's dying wish. And besides, even if you hadn't, Miss Renea and Cyrus would have found out he had died anyway. Cyrus would have tried it anyway, maybe later, and Miss Renea would have tried to stop him again. It's not your fault."

Edward shrugged. "I feel like I was being used. I want to kick that Cromwell guy in the head for making me go all over the place, doing his dirty work. And I want to hurt Cyrus for what he did. He stole the picture, you know. That's how he had Hart and Renea's parts of the array."

Alphonse shook his head. "He shouldn't have tried it, but he would have no matter what we did or whether he had the parts of the circle or not. I think he really loved Mr. Hart, Brother."

"Great way of showing it," Edward muttered, climbing up to his feet and picking up his suitcase. "I know I'm supposed to be able to understand what he did because we did it, too. But I'm still mad. And I still want to know what the military did with what it was he brought back."

Alphonse stood up staight next to his brother, waiting for him to start walking in the direction of the train station, or wherever he was planning to go. Edward just stared at the misty streets for a very long time, then turned around and dropped his suitcase, suddenly wrapping his arms around his brother.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered.

Alphonse was surprised. "It's not your fault that this didn't work out, Brother. We'll find more leads. I'm certain of it."

Edward shook his head against the cold metal. "That wasn't what I was talking about."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Cyrus was sitting alone in a dark cell in Central prison, staring at the floor. The injuries where he had lost his hands and tongue had been repaired, but he couldn't help but feel that he would rather have bled to death on Hart's basement floor. It would be better than sitting here, waiting for his inevitible death sentence.

The cell door opened, and he wasn't even surprised when he saw the Fuhrer himself step in alone, the guard saluting and walking away after he opened the door. Bradley turned and waited until the man was gone, then turned and faced Cyrus. "You're a foolish man, Major Walker."

Cyrus nodded in response, knowing full well that Bradley didn't expect anything more from him. After all, he was mute now. He stared intently at the bandages around the stumps where his hands used to be, as if they would give him the answer to his predicament. He couldn't sleep, or the scene that had occurred and the things he had seen while he was attempting the human transmutation would come flooding back to him. He could only hope that his sentence wouldn't be dragged out.

"Unfortunately, your attempt at human transmutation is now widely known. A pity, because there could have been some use for you if it hadn't been," Bradley continued. He looked at Cyrus for signs of being shocked or upset, but the man just looked as miserable as he had when he had first come in. "But, being as it was public, I am afraid we have to make you an example to anyone else who may consider human transmutation. You understand this, I'm certain. This means that we will have to punish you to the fullest extent that our law will allow. So I am here to give you your sentence."

Cyrus looked up at him with hard, determined eyes, as if daring the Fuhrer to kill him on the spot. No doubt if he could have spoken, he would have said something sharp in response to being told he was going to be sentenced here and now. His amber eyes were full of anger and hatred, more toward himself than anyone else. He was miserable and defeated and had nothing to lose. The only way he could get more miserable is if his sentence were life imprisonment rather than death.

"I am sure I don't have to tell you what it is, but I will anyway," Bradley continued. "Major Cyrus Walker, you have been sentenced to death for the crime of attempting human transmutation and for the death of Renea Cornig. You will be hanged at dawn tomorrow."

Cyrus just nodded resignedly. He knew that he deserved to have his sister's death on his head, but it still upset him to hear it listed as one of the crimes he was being charged with. He wasn't sure why it bothered him so: certianly he deserved to die for killing his own twin sister and orphaning three children, one of which was actually his.

Bradley turned around. "I believe I am finished here. Good night, Major Walker." He then left the cell, the guard locking it behind him.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Edward was leaning against the window in the train, staring out at the now familiar landscape on the way to Cervante. He wasn't entirely sure what he expected to say or do once he got there. He had been informed, rather unsettlingly, that Renea's body was on the this train, being taken back home for burial, and that the military would pay for his trip back to Cervante if he accompanied it and made sure it got back to her family.

"Brother, look," Alphonse said, pointing to the other end of the mostly empty train car. "Isn't that Keyes?"

Edward looked up, expecting to see Ferris Keyes (and wanting to have a few choice words with him). Instead he saw a young dark haired girl who seemed to be struggling to read a book, her face reflecting her concentration as she mouthed the words, perhaps trying to sound them out. She seemed to be alone, and she looked like she hadn't slept at all.

Edward and Alphonse both stood up and approached the girl, who didn't notice them at first. When she did, she didn't seem too thrilled. "You two. What are you doing here?"

"We're bringing the body of one of your father's friends back home to her family," Alphonse explained honestly.

Keyes flinched. "Renea Walker, right?"

Edward nodded. "Well, Renea Cornig. So I take it you heard?"

It was Keyes' turn to nod. "Ferris stopped by for the first time in a long time last night. I overhead him telling Mom what had happened. I didn't know she lived this way, though."

Edward and Alphonse seated themselves across from Keyes without being invited. She glared at them for a moment longer, then resumed trying to read her book. Edward noted that it was a book about alchemy. "So why are you going to Cervante?"

Keyes shrugged. "I didn't know that's where this train went. I've been fighting with my mother a lot about my father ever since I talked to you guys. Last night I finally decided I couldn't live with her anymore, so I took all of the money I had and got on the first train leaving the city."

Alphonse leaned forward a little, his voice low like someone was around to overhear them, or what he had to say was a big secret. "But won't your mother miss you? I know she lied to you, but she still loves you."

Keyes closed her book and sighed. "My mother used to tell me never to study alchemy because no good could come of it. I was never really interested in it until recently, anyway. But she kept telling me not to focus a lot on cooking, or people will start taking advantage of me. Cooking is the one thing that I'm good at, and alchemy is almost exactly like cooking. I fought with her a lot about that, but after you guys talked to me, I started asking around about my father, and people told me the same kinds of things you told me. When I realized that my mother cost me my only chance to get to know someone who was like me but successful, someone who was so sweet and gentle and who loved me so much even though he didn't know me, I decided that I couldn't forgive her or live with her."

Edward thought about what she had said for a few moments. "Alchemy works on equivalent exchange. You can't get more than you put in, but you can combine things. And cooking is the same thing: you can never get more than the ingredients you put in, and with a little energy you can combine them into something else."

Keyes nodded slowly. "Right. Got any other stunning revelations for us?"

Alphonse jumped and looked at his brother, then at Keyes. "Brother has been trying to figure that out ever since your father first said alchemy was like cooking. I figured it out right away as well."

Edward blushed slightly. "Well, I've had more important things to think about than that, or I would have gotten it quickly, too!" Well, Renea had warned him that it was so obvious that he would kick himself when he finally got it. Thinking about Renea just made him feel sad again, however, and he rested his head on the window again.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Cyrus had thought he would be executed privately by the military. It was very rare for hangings to be made public, after all. In fact, the last one that came to his mind was Barry the Chopper's execution, where the outraged and terrified citizens of Central had gathered in droves in applaud the death of the object of their fears.

But Cyrus wasn't a serial killer. His crime had been spur of the moment, without warning, and people had no reason to be afraid of him. And yet there was still a crowd gathered around the gallows as he was lead toward the platform, the crowd shouting things at him the entire time. Well, Bradley _had_ said he was going to be made into an example. He sighed, and it felt weird coming into his mouth without a tongue.

As he was stood on the platform, the noose slipped around his neck, he stare at where the Fuhrer was standing on another platform, waiting for him to read the charges against him and announce his sentence formally. He knew that that had to take place before he could be hanged. The more it dragged out, the more likely he was to lose his nerve and get frightened, and he didn't want to be scared. He deserved this, and maybe with some luck he could go to where Renea and Hart were, if there was an afterlife.

"Major Cyrus Walker," Bradley started. Cyrus was surprised he was still being referred to by his rank, despite having deserted. "You are hereby charged with the crimes of attempting human transmutation, taking the life of Renea Cornig, and the lesser crime of desertion. You are to be sentenced to death. What say you?"

This last part was a formality. He couldn't speak, and he was sure that the crowd knew it. But still, he shook his head, as if waiving his right to speak. The executioner moved him into position, and the crowd watched intently.

"On my signal, you may execute him," the Fuhrer instructed.

Cyrus could feel something icy gripping his heart. His resignation was slipping, and fear was setting in. _Please, kill me quickly..._

The Fuhrer made a gesture with his hand, and the platform dropped out from beneath Cyrus, the rope snapping his neck and killing him instantly.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

While there would be no funeral for Cyrus Walker, everyone in the town of Cervante attended the funeral of Renea Cornig, who was being interred next to her husband at the local cemetary. Keyes, despite not knowing Renea herself, had decided to pay her respects to the alchemist that had been her father's friend, and was standing next to Edward.

Edward was near the front of the crowd, standing just behind Silas, Elvin, and Celia, who were just next to the open grave. Elvin was holding his little sister, and Silas was staring hard at the grave with narrowed eyes, as if willing his mother to get out of the coffin and announce that this was all a mistake. It was an expression that Edward recognized all too well. Next to him was a pile of items that had been pulled off of her as she had been prepared for burial that her eldest son had claimed: her brown coat, her goggles, and her earring.

The ceremony itself had ended, and the coffin was now being buried as the crowd thinned. The sun was setting when the only people who remained at the grave were Renea's children and the Elric brothers. Silas had crouched down next to the grave and was reading the headstone over and over again.

"Silas?" Edward asked.

Silas shook his head. "That sounds too much like _his_ name," he snapped. "I was named after him, and I'm glad he's dead." He looked at the pile of things and reached for the brown coat, wrapping it around himself. "I'm changing my name to Ren."

"Brother, you can't do that," Elvin said softly.

"Why not?!" Silas, or Ren, snapped at him. "Mom was the best! She shouldn't have died! I don't want to have to be named after her murderer!"

"Elvin, it's all right," Edward assured the younger boy. "Just...let him do what he has to." He was worried about what the little alchemist in training had in mind, but he couldn't bring himself to warn the boy.

"Come on," Edward said to Alphonse, gesturing with his head toward the train station. They left the Cornig children alone at their mother's grave.


	13. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

_Eleven year old Ren looked at the boy curiously. He was familiar, what with his red coat and long blonde hair, but at the same time he was quite different from Edward Elric. His eyes and hair were darker, his face was a different shape, and more importantly, Edward Elric had to be about nineteen now. This boy was not much older than Ren._

_Not that Ren hadn't changed himself. He was often mistaken for a girl, and lately he wasn't even bothering to correct people. His red hair was getting longer and would be long enough to braid soon, and he had pierced his ears, putting his mother's earring into his right ear. He wore her coat and goggles every day, and had even put a scar under his right eye that was similar to his mother's. Someday he would get her tattoo._

"_What are you doing here?" Ren asked the boy, not entirely sure who he was but knowing that if he was related to Edward Elric, he was likely to only bring trouble with him._

_The boy didn't seem to know him. "I'm Alphonse Elric," he introduced. "I...I've been looking for my older brother, Edward. He disappeared a long time ago. I've been traveling to try to find him."_

"_I met your brother," Ren said quietly. "A long time ago, when my mother died. If I had never met him, my mother might be alive. You were there, too. You were wearing a suit of armor."_

_Alphonse grimmaced. "I'm sorry. I lost my memory of much that happened before a couple of years ago. Could you please tell me your name?"_

"_Ren," Ren answered. "Ren Cornig." He gestured toward the grave they were standing in front of. "Renea Cornig was my mother." He continued to stare. "You really don't remember anything?"_

_Alphonse shook his head. "I'm sorry, I don't. Did my brother really cause your mother's death?"_

_Ren shook his head. "My uncle did. He was executed for it. But it's hard for me not to think that I met your brother just before my mother died. I think about a lot of things that happened before she died that maybe, if they didn't, she'd still be alive."_

_Alphonse nodded. "My brother used to talk like, too. Right after our mother died. He blamed my father most of the time, though." Alphonse turned and started to walk away. "You seem like a nice girl. Don't do anything you'll regret later, like try to bring your mother back. Okay?"_

_Ren had had no intention on doing so, and he didn't correct Alphonse's assumption that he was female. In fact, it was after that that he decided he would never correct people again. Just the opposite: he would become the woman that his mother was._

Eighteen year old Ren Cornig was sitting in a bar, reflecting once again on the day she'd shed the last bit of the boy Silas Cornig and started down on the path to become as much like her mother as possible. She had been traveling, had been to Thare and manged to hold her own, had learned alchemy from a variety of sources, and was still determined to become a State Alchemist.

Sometimes her mind wandered to the Elric brothers, and she wondered if Alphonse had managed to find Edward. He'd seemed so lost without him, and it saddened her to consider the possibility that they still hadn't found one another. Saddened her enough that she sighed, finished her drink, and tossed her money onto the counter, stepping out into Cervante.

It was the first time she had been home in years. She hadn't seen her brother or sister since she left home at age twelve, and she didn't even know if they still lived here, or if they would want anything to do with her. But thinking about the Elric brothers had made her miss her siblings more than she ever thought she would when she'd originally left.

As she approached the house where she had grown up all too soon, she found herself getting increasingly nervous. She'd still been a boy when she'd left, for one, and now, thanks to various foul-tasting concoctions from foreign lands and some modified healing alchemy, she looked very much the part of a woman now. She also hadn't so much as sent a letter home in the six years she had been gone. She wondered if her siblings would forgive her for that.

Ren hesistated, listening at the door. She could hear music from inside, and figured that Elvin must have continued his piano lessons. From the sound of it, despite his rough beginnings he had become more than proficient at it by now. It brought a smile to her face, and she was loathe to interrupt the song by knocking. But she knocked anyway, and sure enough, the song stopped.

The door opened, and standing on the other side was a tall, willowy, handsome young man, with strawberry-blonde hair and light green eyes which were covered by a pair of glasses, who her mother had always said looked more like his father with a little of his mother's coloring.

"Hello, can I..." Elvin stopped, before realizing who it was. He blinked a few times, examining the visitor once more. "Ren?" he asked at last. He stepped aside, more to let more light fall on the visitor than to invite her in, but Ren took it as an invitation anyway, stepping inside.

"It's been a while," Ren said, looking around the living room. A few of the chairs used for lessons were gone, and a small piano had been put in their place. It annoyed her a bit, but then, it wasn't as if she had been around to object. It was now Elvin's house to do as he pleased. "Where's Celia?" she asked.

"She went to visit Keyes. She's teaching her how to cook," Elvin said, examining Ren again. "Wow, I can't believe you're..."

"Here?" Ren finished. She knew what Elvin was really thinking, and smiled teasingly at him. "I've been all over the place. But before I went to Central to try my luck at getting into the next State Alchemist qualification exam I thought I'd stop here."

Elvin closed the door at last, staring at the floor. "You could have stopped sooner. Or at least sent a letter."

Ren nodded. "I was afraid you'd bring that up. I'm sorry, really. But I was traveling and learning and...well, changing, obviously."

"I can see that," Elvin said, stepping over to the piano bench and seating himself at it. Ren took that as a hint that she could sit down and did so, looking around the house again.

"Still playing the piano?" she asked conversationally. She knew it was a pretty stupid question: she'd heard him playing on the way in.

Elvin didn't tell her so, however. He just nodded and ran a hand over the keys. "I gave up alchemy. It just didn't interest me anymore. I got really good at the piano when it became my only focus, but out here there's not much I can do with it. I teach it once in a while for money."

Ren nodded. "You could always come to Central with me. It's the center of everything. You could make a name for yourself."

"And what about Celia? She's just a homemaker. She has no desire to go to Central, and I don't particularly want to leave her," Elvin pointed out.

Ren flinched when she heard that. "I thought you said she was with Keyes. Why can't she stay here with her?" Ren leaned forward a bit. "I'm sorry I left, Elvin. Really, I am. But I didn't think you'd want to come with me."

"But you could have asked at least," Elvin pointed out. "Even if we didn't want to come with you, you could have given us the option instead of making it feel like you didn't care about us."

"I know, but I was twelve. Twelve year olds aren't known for common sense," Ren argued. "And I'm here now. I'm willing to take you or both of you with me now. I miss you two, really. I know you probably don't believe me, but the longer I didn't get in touch with you, the harder I knew it would be. That's why I didn't."

"Are you about finished?" Elvin asked.

Ren sighed and got up. "Yeah. Sorry I wasted your time."

She headed toward the door when a voice stopped her. "I was heading toward Central myself, anyway," Elvin said.

Ren turned around and smiled at her brother. "So does that mean what I think it means?"

Elvin ran his hand over the piano keys again. "It means stay the night and we'll take things from there."

Ren began to head back into the house. "Thank you," she said to her brother.

**The End**


End file.
